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Ted Cruz Surges In the Polls

DonkeyHotey / flickr

With less than seven weeks until the Iowa caucuses, the nation is relying on Iowa polls for a best guess as to who will emerge a winner.

On this politics day edition of River to River, Ben Kieffer talks with one of the nation’s top pollsters, J. Ann Selzer, whose latest poll shows Senator Ted Cruz jumping 21 percentage points among likely GOP caucus-goers.

“We took a look at the last five caucus cycles to get a feel for the kinds of jumps candidates can make from one poll to another," says Selzer. "We never had anybody with a 20-point lead, let alone a 21 -point jump from one poll to the next. It’s unprecedented.”

Along with with political polling expert, Caroline Tolbert, they discuss how to interpret polls, what separates good from bad polling, and how polling has changed in recent years.

Ben Kieffer is the host of IPR's River to River