Source: Politics<\/p>\n
J. Ann Selzer vividly remembers the moment when she first found out there was a problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was first alerted through a message on Twitter,\u201d the renowned Iowa pollster recalled in an interview with POLITICO last week that represented her most expansive public comments yet about the four-year-old episode.<\/p>\n
Selzer was at Drake University in Des Moines, preparing to release the numbers from her final poll of the 2020 Democratic caucuses \u2014 results so widely anticipated that CNN, a co-sponsor of the poll, had created an entire, hourlong show on which Selzer was set to provide commentary.<\/p>\n
But those poll results never came out. Because of a technical error, CNN and the Des Moines Register scrapped the poll<\/a> entirely. Two days later, a massive failure of the state Democratic Party\u2019s infrastructure delayed the caucus results themselves for nearly a day.<\/p>\n Now Selzer \u2014 and Iowa \u2014 get another chance. The Des Moines Register\u2019s final poll of this year\u2019s Republican race, co-sponsored by NBC News and the cable company Mediacom, is expected to be released this weekend.<\/p>\n The poll occupies a legendary space in the closing 48 hours before the caucuses. Even in a thus-far one-sided contest, it will once again be closely watched for signs of movement. And Selzer hopes it will help move past the nightmare of 2020.<\/p>\n The poll isn\u2019t just notable for its historical accuracy<\/a> \u2014 it can also fuel the momentum of a late-surging candidate or pile on a flagging one. Selzer\u2019s poll showed former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) gaining steam in the final days before the 2012 caucuses, and he ultimately overtook Mitt Romney and won.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a key part of the poll\u2019s influence: Caucuses aren\u2019t primaries. Momentum and organization have always been the keys to victory \u2014 or at least outperforming expectations.<\/p>\n That raises the stakes for Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who could parlay the appearance of momentum in Selzer\u2019s final poll to energize supporters to brave the likely subzero temperatures on Monday night to vote for their candidate.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also another test for Selzer and the polling profession at large. Pollsters have struggled to measure Trump\u2019s support, and this year\u2019s primaries could offer clues about whether they\u2019ve figured out how to reach his backers.<\/p>\n Unlike some other pollsters, Selzer\u2019s methodology is broad and fairly simple. Rather than only targeting voters who\u2019ve participated in caucuses before, the poll starts with a list of all registered Iowa voters. \u201cOur screen is very simple: We ask how likely is it you\u2019ll be attending the GOP caucus,\u201d Selzer said. \u201cWill you definitely attend, probably attend, might or might not attend, or probably not attend? And we take you if you say \u2018definitely\u2019 or \u2018probably.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s campaign, for one, says it is seeking to bring out large numbers of first-time caucusgoers, who might be missed if pollsters ignored people who\u2019ve never caucused before. That was part of Selzer\u2019s success in the 2008 Democratic race, when her poll correctly suggested then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) would benefit from a surge of new caucusgoers that had little precedent in history.<\/p>\n Selzer\u2019s poll is still conducted over the telephone, even as many other surveys have moved online to cast a wider net or reduce costs. Selzer said she is \u201cnot comfortable making that shift yet,\u201d since phone numbers are still the most accessible contacts for registered voters.<\/p>\n But it was also a phone interviewer who forced the scuttling of the 2020 poll. One of the employees at a call center conducting the survey had enlarged the screen to read the questions to the people they were interviewing. But in doing so, that cut off some of the names on the list.<\/p>\n In at least one interview, Pete Buttigieg\u2019s name was among the omitted. And Buttigieg\u2019s campaign had already caught wind of it and lodged a complaint with CNN.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then things happened that I was not in the room for,\u201d said Selzer, who rushed back to her West Des Moines office, about a 10-minute drive from Drake, to see if there was a way to eliminate that interviewer\u2019s responses from the survey.<\/p>\n But with less than an hour to go until the poll was set to be released, the poll\u2019s sponsors told her they were scrapping it entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cI was sitting at my desk when the call came saying, \u2018We can\u2019t prove that this was only one interviewer, so we\u2019re going to pull the poll,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so we chatted about that, and there you are.\u201d<\/p>\n