At a campaign rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania on Sunday, Donald Trump attacked the results of a new Iowa Poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 percentage points in Iowa as the campaign draws to an end. The poll, conducted by Selzer & Co., was published on Saturday night by the Des Moines Register and has Harris leading Trump 47-44 among likely voters.
The poll of 808 Iowa adults who had already voted or said they definitely will vote was conducted between Oct. 28 and 31.
J. Ann Selzer is Iowa’s most respected and accurate political pollster. She is known for being willing to publish polls that are outliers, because she is confident in her method and willing to follow where the data leads. Selzer’s polls, for example, correctly showed Barack Obama winning the Iowa Caucus in 2008, when other pollsters were showing Hillary Clinton winning, and Trump winning Iowa by a much larger percentage in 2016 than other polls predicted.
But on Sunday in Pennsylvania, Trump denounced the new Iowa Poll as “fake” and “corrupt.” He called either Selzer or the Register, or both, “my enemies.” (Given Trump’s rambling speaking style, which has become increasingly incoherent in the last few months, it’s unclear exactly who he was referring to. It’s also possible, considering how little Trump cares about the truth, he didn’t know or care who he was attacking.) He also said polls like the new Iowa Poll “should be illegal.”
Trump cited a different poll from Emerson College that was published on Saturday morning that showed him up by 10 percentage points in Iowa. Emerson is better known for its national-level polls, and is not considered as reliable as Selzer’s work, which focuses entirely on Iowa. Emerson’s accuracy record on state-level polls in Iowa is not particularly impressive.
“I got a poll, I’m 10 points up in Iowa,” Trump said. “One of my enemies just puts out a poll, I’m three down. Joni Ernst called me, everyone’s called me, they said, ‘you’re killing in Iowa.’ The farmers love me and I love them. But they came up — they just announced a fake poll. Hey, think of it: right before the election, that I’m three points down. I’m not down in Iowa.”
Ernst has been campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania, telling voters there in late October, “I’m like, ‘Hey folks, Iowa — the deal is already sealed,’ right? We’re voting for Trump, OK. Iowa is in the bag.”
Ernst wasn’t at the rally in Lititz on Sunday. It would have been awkward for her to stand by Trump as he attacked the Iowa Poll as fake, since Selzer correctly predicted Ernst’s victories in her 2014 and 2020 senate races.
During his rant about the Iowa Poll — he never used its name, or Selzer’s, or the Register’s — Trump pointed at the media section at the back of the crowd, saying, “the polls are just as corrupt as some of the writers back there.”
“They can make those polls sing,” Trump said, denouncing polls as dishonest. “They can make them sing. They brag about it.”
Trump did say who “they” are.
Trump returned to his complaints about polls almost an hour later in his long, rambling speech.
“I’m telling you, you can make those suckers sing,” he said. “You can do — you really do inflict damage, you know, when you do like this person from Iowa. Today, the election essentially is really — we’re talking turkey — comes out with a poll, different from every other poll. ‘Cause it wasn’t even in question, it’s really the opposite way, I’m way up… It’s called suppression. They suppress. And it actually should be illegal.”
Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican Party, also attacked the new poll, declaring Selzer and the Register had “just lost any shred of credibility they had left.”
“This should be classified as spreading propaganda with polling like this.”
“I’ve been in their shoes on a Saturday night before Election Day, when the Iowa Poll results come out and they don’t look like what we’d like them to be,” Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst said during an online Iowa Democratic Party news conference about the new poll on Saturday night.
The Windsor Heights Democrat added, “Ann Selzer’s well respected for a reason, this poll is well respected for a reason. To question the credibility of an Ann Selzer poll is not a wise move.”
The previous Iowa Poll conducted in September showed Trump with a 4 percentage point lead over Harris, 47-43. But that poll also showed a great deal of momentum for Harris in Iowa, since she entered the race when President Biden announced in late July he was no longer seeking reelection. In the June Iowa Poll, Trump had been leading Biden by 18 percentage points, 50-32.
Closing that gap by 14 percentage points between July 21, when Harris declared her candidacy, and Sept. 8-11, when the survey was conducted, showed how much the race in Iowa had already changed, especially since Harris hasn’t visited the state since entering the race, has no campaign offices in the state and has run no TV or radio ads here.
Ann Selzer’s well respected for a reason, this poll is well respected for a reason. To question the credibility of an Ann Selzer poll is not a wise move.
Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst
“I am pleasantly surprised but not shocked by this news. It matches what we’re feeling on the ground across the state, particularly among women,” Konfrst said about the poll. “We are hearing from women — Republicans, independents and Democrats — who are saying enough is enough. They are sick and tired of politicians interfering in their doctor’s offices, and are looking for people up and down the ballot who are actually going to fight for their freedoms.”
The poll showed strong gains by Harris among women who don’t belong to any political party. Independent women chose Harris over Trump, 57 percent to 29 percent. That 28-point gap is an increase of 23 percentage points from the September poll. Independent men still favor Trump, 47 percent to 37 percent.
With women overall, the new poll found Harris leading Trump by 20 percentage points, up 23 points from September. Trump still leads among men overall, 52-38, but that is 13 percentage points less than the lead he had in September.
The most unexpected finding of the poll was the support Harris received from voters 65 and older, who make up the most reliable voters in Iowa. Harris has a 19 percentage point lead in the poll among seniors who are likely voters, 55-36, and leads among both men and women in that demographic.
Harris has a small 2 percentage point lead over Trump with men 65 and older, 47-45. But when it comes to women 65 and older, the gap is enormous.
Senior women favor Harris in the poll by a margin of more than 2-to-1, 63 percent to 28 percent.
“That’s kind of a jaw-dropping number,” Selzer said about the senior gender gap in an interview with The Bulwark Podcast on Sunday.
It’s even more significant given that the poll shows the number of likely voters 65 and older who said they definitely will vote was 93 percent, an increase of 9 percentage points since September.
Selzer told Bulwark host Tim Miller, a former Republican political strategist who broke with his party over Trump’s nomination in 2016, she understood why people would be surprised by the new poll, given that Trump had won Iowa in 2016 and 2020, and won the Republican caucus earlier this year overwhelmingly.
“I don’t think anybody would look at the numbers and not be, you know, in a somewhat state of shock,” Selzer said.
Miller told his audience about Selzer’s outstanding reputation as a pollster, and explained how political professionals always take her work seriously, especially when it seems her results are an outlier. Her outliers have repeatedly proven correct in the past, and no other pollster comes close to Selzer’s accuracy when it comes to Iowa.
Selzer, Miller noted, is one of the few well-known pollsters who is unafraid to publish outlier polls, which some other pollsters might bury if the results didn’t meet what they anticipated.
“Our methodology is to make no assumptions, and we made no assumptions,” Selzer said. “And here we are.”
Since the results of most polls have shown little movement — even as Harris continues to draw capacity crowds at events while Trump’s rally audiences are shrinking; Harris has also been setting records in small-dollar donations, typically a reliable sign of enthusiastic support — there are no questions about whether common polling methods are giving too much weight to pro-Trump demographics.
If you’re looking at the past to say that’s what the future’s going to look like, to me, that’s polling backward. So, you’re doing something that will give you results that look like 2020, perhaps. I want results that look like 2024.
Ann Selzer
That approach downplays changes in the electorate since 2020, and the impact of recent events. In Iowa, the draconian abortion ban pushed through the Iowa Legislature with the support of Gov. Kim Reynolds finally went into effect on July 29. Reynolds and legislative Republicans also pushed through a school voucher system that most Iowans disapproved of.
Trump brags about appointing the justices to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing Republican-led states to impose previously unconstitutional abortion restrictions. He’s also a vocal proponent of school vouchers.
Selzer’s 2016 polls accurately showed Trump winning Iowa, but most other pollsters failed to accurately gauge support for Trump that year. That appears to have led many to try to compensate by using the voter turnout in 2020 as their model this year. That’s not something Selzer does.
“If you’re looking at the past to say that’s what the future’s going to look like, to me, that’s polling backward,” Selzer said. “So, you’re doing something that will give you results that look like 2020, perhaps. I want results that look like 2024.”
Harris isn’t the only Democrat doing well in the latest Iowa Poll. On Sunday, the Register published the poll’s results for this year’s congressional races. The poll of the same 808 likely voters found the Democratic candidate leading in both the 1st and the 3rd congressional districts. At least, generically.
For this year’s congressional races, the Iowa Poll has just surveyed which candidate is preferred according to party, not using the candidate’s names.
In the 3rd District, which includes Polk County, Democrat Lanon Baccam is challenging freshman Republican Rep. Zach Nunn. The new poll’s results showed 3rd District likely voters favored the Democratic candidate by 7 percentage points, 48-41.
The Democratic advantage in the polls is much larger in the 1st District. Democrat Christina Bohannan is mounting her second challenge to incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the district that includes Iowa City and Davenport. According to the poll, likely voters prefer the Democratic candidate by 16 percentage points, 53-37.
In 2020, Miller-Meeks beat Bohannan by 20,173 votes. But speaking to Little Village earlier this year, Bohannan said it was already obvious this race would be very different, especially on the issue of abortion. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade at the end of June 2022, but Gov. Reynolds, unlike hardline anti-abortion Republican governors in other states, did not push the legislature to act immediately.
“Last time, it was a national issue people were talking about,” Bohannan said. “But I think it has really hit Iowa front-and-center now with the six-week abortion ban, that bans abortion before most women know they are pregnant.”
Both the 1st and the 3rd have seen outsized spending on ads in this election, Axios Des Moines reported on Monday.
“As of Oct. 31, nearly $23 million was spent in the 3rd District between Republican incumbent Rep. Zach Nunn and Lanon Baccam,” Axios’ Jason Clayworth reported. “Republicans narrowly outspent Democrats by around $500,000.”
Slightly more has been spent in the 1st District — $24 million, according to AdImpact — but Democrats have outspent Republicans by almost $4.5 million.
Perhaps even more interesting than the poll results in the 1st and the 3rd is the result in the 2nd District, which includes Cedar Rapids and Dubuque. In that district, Democrat Sarah Corkery, a political newcomer, has been running a grassroots campaign with no assistance from the national party against two-term incumbent Rep. Ashley Hinson. According to the poll, likely voters in the 2nd prefer a Republican by only 3 percentage points, 45-42.
Statewide, voters preferred a Democratic candidate over a Republican by a small plurality, 45 percent to 42 percent. That is a significant change from the polls findings in September, when likely voters said they preferred a Republican as a generic congressional choice, 52 percent to 44 percent.
During the online news conference on Saturday night following the release of the presidential poll results, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart credited efforts by the party’s volunteers as the reason Democrats appear to be gaining ground.
“We have put the work in for over a year now in engaging those volunteers and having the kind of strategy that results in the doors being knocked and phone calls being made,” Hart said. “We have knocked hundreds of thousands of doors in the month of October, and we had more than 30,000 doors that were knocked just today.”
Hart added, “That cannot be underestimated.”
