Pollsters Dumbfounded by Trump

Pollsters Dumbfounded by Trump

By Ben Kamisar
http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/cidistefano/ps103/smallogo.jpg
August 27, 2015

Excerpt

Polling experts agree on one thing when it comes to Donald Trump’s presidential run: They’ve never seen anything like it.

The billionaire businessman’s dominance of the Republican presidential race is forcing experienced political hands to question whether everything they know about winning the White House is wrong.

The shocks have come in quick succession, with Trump first rocketing to the top of national polls, and then taking double-digit leads in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

In another act of political magic, Trump managed to flip his favorability rating from negative to positive in one poll during the span of a month — a feat that Monmouth University’s Patrick Murray called “astounding.”

“That defies any rule in presidential politics that I’ve ever seen,” Murray, the director Monmouth’s Polling Institute, told The Hill.

Trump’s favorability rose from 20 percent to 52 percent among Republican voters between July and August, Monmouth found. … Read the full report