[UPDATED] Iowa's 2016 Presidential Caucuses Final Poll Results: It'll Be A Close One

DES MOINES, IA — The final poll before the Iowa Caucuses was released Saturday and shows former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a narrow lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination while businessman and reality star Donald Trump held a slight lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio showing a slight increase in support.

With the margin of error set at 4 percent, here’s the poll’s bottom line: No winner is certain.

Clinton held a 3 percent lead over Sanders, 45 percent to 42 percent, for the Democratic nomination, while former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley trails at 3 percent, in The Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, one of the most respected in the nation.

Turning out voters to caucus sites is always the key, strategist David Axelrod told the Register.

“Clinton’s voters are more certain and much more likely to have caucused before,” Axelrod said. “Bernie’s organizational task, counting so heavily on first-time caucusgoers — many of them young — is greater.”

• See the full final Des Moines Register 2016 Iowa Caucus Poll here.

On the GOP side, Trump continues to hold the lead with 28 percent support, followed by Cruz at 23 percent. The rest of the field shows Rubio at 15 percent, Dr. Ben Carson at 10 percent, Sen. Rand Paul at 5 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3 percent.

Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and the “not sure” category all received 2 percent support in the poll, taken Jan. 26-29.

• See Also — 2016 Iowa Caucuses: Why Trump Could Lose

The 2016 Iowa Caucuses are Monday, Feb. 1.

Pollsters cautioned the Republican contest remains fluid, while Democrats who have lined up behind Clinton appeared to do so convincingly.

Of Trump supporters, 71 percent said their mind is made up. For Cruz, the number drops to 61 percent. On the Democratic side, 83 percent of Clinton supporters said they are solidly behind her. For Sanders, the number drops to 69 percent.

Trump leads both with Iowans who say they’ll definitely vote and those who will probably vote. “Turnout seems not to affect him,” pollster Ann Selzer told the Register. “Either way, he seems on solid ground.”

Among first-time caucusgoers, Trump has a 16-point lead, but those newbies make up only 40 percent of caucus goers. Among the other 60 percent, Cruz has a 3-point lead.

That could prove significant as participating in Iowa’s caucuses means requires a relatively significant time commitment, and the forecast for Monday calls for some nasty weather.

Another sign of a possible cliffhanger Monday night: Although just 9 percent of likely GOP caucusgoers haven’t yet made a choice, they’re part of the 45 percent who could be persuaded to switch candidates in the final hours before Iowa beings voting at 7 p.m.

From State Fair appearances to countless stump speeches at Pizza Ranch restaurants across the state, from multiple debates to Donald Trump’s no-show Thursday night in the final GOP gathering, Iowans have had plenty of time to gauge the Democratic and Republican contenders for their parties’ nomination.

The most recent Iowa Poll before Saturday’s release, conducted in early January, showed neck-and-neck races between Republicans Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the newspaper says.

Selzer, who has overseen most of the Register’s Iowa Polls since 1987, has gained attention in the national press as one of the most accurate – if not the best – pollster in the business.

Her reputation was cemented in 2008, when her poll the weekend before the caucuses predicted Barack Obama’s win. Clinton’s campaign vociferously questioned her methods, which many in the national media latched onto.

But Selzer, whose data showed the tidal wave of first-time voters embracing the then-Illinois senator’s message of hope and change, was proved right on caucus night.

Many of the presidential contenders were camped out in Iowa this weekend, criss-crossing the state from colleges to churches, union halls to Pizza Ranch locations. Former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea will be in Des Moines Monday to help Hillary Clinttry to seal the deal with voters, something that didn’t happen eight years ago when Barack Obama won the state.

The Register’s editorial board weighed in earlier this month with its recommendations to Iowans, naming Clinton and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as its choices for the nominations.

New York Times Endorsements

Saturday, The New York Times editorial staff endorsed Clinton and Ohio Sen. John Kasich. The newspaper noted it has supported Clinton’s run for president before, as well as her tenure as a senator from New York. She won praise for focus on the pay gap for women, her push for a no-fly zone in Syria, and her work with sanctions against Iran as secretary of state.

“Hillary Clinton is the right choice for the Democrats to present a vision for America that is radically different from the one that leading Republican candidates offer — a vision in which middle-class Americans have a real shot at prosperity, women’s rights are enhanced, undocumented immigrants are given a chance at legitimacy, international alliances are nurtured and the country is kept safe,” the Times said.

On the GOP side, the Times described the GOP race as brutish, and characterized frontrunners Donald Trump as uninformed and Ted Cruz as nakedly ambitious.

Of Kasich, a former senator and now governor of Ohio, the Times says: “Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, though a distinct underdog, is the only plausible choice for Republicans tired of the extremism and inexperience on display in this race. And Mr. Kasich is no moderate. As governor, he’s gone after public-sector unions, fought to limit abortion rights and opposed same-sex marriage.”

Republican Contenders: Trump Vs. Cruz

With the Iowa Caususes two days away, Trump sharpened his attacks on Cruz in New Hampshire Friday, calling Cruz a Canadian “anchor baby.”

Cruz, in turn, slammed Trump, again, for his “New York values.”

Another poll of Iowans released Thursday showed Trump had pulled ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with a 7-point lead among likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers. (Most of those polled were questioned before Trump’s public spat with Bob Vander Plaats, who wields enormous political power in Iowa, and all of them were questioned before Trump’s decision not to attend the GOP debate, which most political commentators say was a tactical error.)

Trump enjoys greater support in New Hampshire—recent polls have him up about 19 points over Marco Rubio and John Kasich, who are nearly tied in second.

Speaking in Nashua Radisson Friday, Trump again questioned the validity of Cruz’s American citizenship.

“Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada,” he said. “He can run for prime minister of Canada, no problem.”

Many legal experts say Trump is wrong about Cruz. A Harvard Law Review report found Cruz’s citizenship is valid.

“The only anchor here is the one being dragged behind the S.S. New York Values,” Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said in a statement.

Cruz has claimed those values include a pro-choice statement Trump to “Meet the Press” in 1999.

Clinton’s Experience Against Sanders’ Call for Reform

For Democrats, the question is simple: Will Feb. 1 be the beginning of Hillary Clinton’s coronation as her party’s presidential nominee, or will Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pull a slight upset, much as then-Sen. Barack Obama did eight years ago?

The Democratic front-runners are a study in contrasting styles, politicos say. Clinton is a pragmatist who knows she’ll have to work with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives if she wants to get anything done as president, while Sanders argues voters want to shake up Congress and Wall Street.

Des Moines Register political columnist Kathie Obradovich writes that Clinton has more to lose than Sanders does come Monday.

“If the best campaign organization that money can buy can’t hold off a Democratic socialist, she will be damaged goods,” Obradovich says.

On Wednesday, the newest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls put Clinton only 3 points in front of Sanders. The Vermont senator has a 20-point lead over Clinton in his neighboring state of New Hampshire, which votes Feb. 9, while the first poll of South Carolina gives Clinton a 64 percent to 27 percent lead over Sanders.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has billed himself as the voice of a younger generation with new ideas, continues to languish in third with 3 percent support in Iowa.

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Poll methodology, from the Register:

The Iowa Poll, conducted January 26-29 for The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 602 registered Iowa voters who say they definitely or probably will attend the 2016 Republican caucuses and 602 registered voters who say they definitely or probably will attend the 2016 Democratic caucuses.

Interviewers contacted 3,019 randomly selected active voters from the Iowa secretary of state’s voter registration list by telephone. Responses were adjusted by age, sex and congressional district to reflect all active voters in the voter registration list.

Questions based on the subsamples of 602 likely Democratic caucus attendees or 602 likely Republican caucus attendees each have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points. This means that if this survey were repeated using the same questions and the same methodology, 19 times out of 20, the findings would not vary from the percentages shown here by more than plus or minus 4.0 percentage points. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error.

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» Photos by Gage Skidmore via Flickr / Creative Commons