The FiveThirtyEight Team Goes To Iowa

GRINNELL — Greetings from the Frontier Cafe! We’ve just come from a Jeb Bush town hall at the firearm accessories manufacturer Brownells and have hunkered down over late afternoon steak, eggs and something Micah calls a “breakfast salad” that I’m not going to get into here. As you might guess, the Bush event’s location was not chosen without some thought — the four-star admiral who introduced the former Florida governor made sure to mention duck hunting with his Navy Seal son-in-laws. But the tone of the town hall was anything but an in-your-face gun rights bonanza. All of us were struck by how Jeb was almost professorial in his manner when answering questions. And he is certainly not apologizing for that: “I am a serious candidate,” he said, “I don’t believe in bombast.” This might not be the right year for seriousness given that Donald Trump is the leading Republican candidate. (Trump, I will note, is the only other candidate whom Bush mentioned by name during the hour-long event — it was a little bit like watching Captain Ahab chase his white whale.) But the audience was picking up what Jeb was putting down. They skewed older and were more sedate than, say, my most recent book club meeting, and we saw several scribbling notes, taking seriously their birthright vetting of presidential candidates. It was, all in all, a well-attended event with engaged attendees asking about how Bush would advance disability rights (two questions on that), what his “market-based solution for climate change” might be, and whether or not he would work to overturn Roe v. Wade if elected president. There weren’t many moments when the crowd was observably roused, but one did come, unexpectedly, when Bush mentioned that tonight’s State of the Union address would be President Obama’s last. “That wasn’t meant to be an applause line,” he said. “But I understand the sentiment.”

DES MOINES — The Iowa caucuses are just under three weeks away, but some Iowans are already feeling the pressure of preparing for the big night. I sat down for lunch at the Des Moines Embassy Club with Jeffrey Goetz, a 59-year-old attorney who has run or co-chaired his Westbury precinct caucus every year since he first moved to Iowa from California in 2001, to discuss his plans. Goetz said he hadn’t previously been too involved in the political scene beyond yelling at his TV, but upon moving to Iowa he discovered that one of his partners was the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. Goetz went along to a fundraiser, where he was introduced to then-Gov. Tom Vilsack and Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson, his Waterbury neighbor. “I’m thinking, having just come from California, I’d have to be what, a $10,000-a-plate contributor to meet the governor, and here the lieutenant governor lives in my neighborhood?” Goetz said. He’s been involved in local politics ever since. In past years, he has handwritten letters to every registered Democrat and independent (differently worded letters, mind you) in his precinct to invite them to the caucus. But this year, he’s just now starting to prepare, and is planning to use a printing shop. “I’m probably a little bit behind,” he said. After making arrangements for the parking permits and barricades that’ll be needed at the caucus, he’ll fine-tune this year’s letter. “This time, I’m gonna outsource it.”

CEDAR FALLS — As we make our way to Donald Trump’s event here, I’m reflecting on the conventional wisdom that Iowa is Ted Cruz’s to lose. The FiveThirtyEight forecasts, however, reveal that Trump may have a better chance of winning Iowa than he’s getting credit for. Using only Iowa polls, our forecast gives both Cruz and Trump a 42 percent chance of winning. Marco Rubio has a 9 percent chance, followed by Ben Carson at 4 percent and Jeb Bush at 1 percent. This shouldn’t be too surprising given that Cruz and Trump are each polling at 27.3 percent in Iowa, on average, while no candidate other than Rubio (at 13.2 percent) is polling above 10 percent. Trump’s chance of winning does drop to 28 percent when looking at our “polls-plus” forecast, which takes into account state polls, national polls and endorsements. The reason is that Trump has no endorsements from any governors or members of Congress, and he is doing worse in Iowa polls than in national surveys. Whether or not endorsements actually matter this year isn’t clear. Either way, Trump isn’t so far behind Cruz, who has a 49 percent chance of winning in the polls-plus forecast. If endorsements do matter, that could be good news for Rubio, who is at 18 percent in the polls-plus forecast. No other candidate has more than a 2 percent chance of winning in that forecast. However you slice it, Iowa is either a two-way race or a three-way race with less than three weeks to go.