Ted Cruz’s pollster speaks on his candidate’s Iowa victory, and makes this very compelling point:
Trump was increasingly rejected by traditional caucus attendees, especially after his decision to skip the final debate ...
In most years, the arguments have all been made well in advance of the last week. While some things can change and some voters will change their minds, it’s rare for a major shake-up of the race to happen in the few days before the caucus.
But this year, once again, was different. The last week saw Trump skip the final debate, a move that cost him substantially with traditional caucus goers. It also saw the first real opportunity for voters to see the non-Trump candidates debate the issues rather than participating in a circus.
The conventional wisdom really settled on the idea that Donald Trump “won” that last debate because his decision dominated the news cycle for several days. Yet this guy claims he saw movement in post-debate polling—a period generally missed by public pollsters.
That seems intuitively right. According to Trump, the world revolves around Donald Trump. But there was an opportunity for reliable Republican caucus goers to watch that final debate without that Trump circus, and is it unreasonable to believe that it helped Cruz and Rubio? Trump may have been happy to hold his rally in front of his adoring fans, but he ceded prime-time real estate to his opponents and gave them the chance to talk about things non-Trump. For someone who loves to brag about driving the debate, he willingly ceded it to his opponents.
In retrospect, that looks pretty stupid. But of course, we all know hindsight’s eyeglass prescription.