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Let's talk about this Iowa Poll from the Des Moines Register that was released this morning. It is one of those surveys that has the potential to grab attention heading into the week ahead. And sure, some folks are bound to take it and run with it. First thing's first...
Yes, the Selzer and Co. poll of the Hawkeye state finds former President Donald Trump up only four points on Vice President Harris, 47-43. And yes, that is a marked departure from where things ended up four years ago in the Hawkeye state when the then-president took the state's six electoral votes with a 53-45 percent victory. Both 2024 candidates, then, are running behind the 2020 nominees in the state with Trump lagging further behind his own pace than Harris is Biden's.
But the newly released poll also differs from the previous Iowa Poll released in June before the Atlanta debate between Biden and Trump. Before even factoring in that debate -- the event that ultimately led to Biden's exit -- the president was trailing Trump 50-32 in the Hawkeye state. Harris, then, has cut more than three-quarters into that deficit in the environment immediately following her own debate this last week with Trump.
Comparing this poll to both the 2020 results in Iowa and the most recent poll -- a bit of an apples to oranges comparison -- would by extension give one the impression that the race for the six electoral votes in 2024 is quite close. It is certainly closer than those two benchmarks!
But here is the thing: 2024 has not exactly offered a bumper crop of polling data out of the Hawkeye state. In fact, this Selzer poll is the first such survey from Iowa since Biden stepped aside and Harris was formally nominated by the Democratic National Convention. Let me repeat that: this is the only public data on the Harris-Trump race in Iowa right now. Counting the September Selzer poll of Iowa in 2020, there had been 18 surveys of the state by this point in the initial Biden-Trump race. By election day there had been 46 surveys of the state.
The data, then, is woefully lacking in 2024 at least by comparison. And couple that also with the fact that the 2020 polling missed pretty badly in Iowa. It was close with respect to Biden's share of support, overstating it by around two points. However, the Iowa polling in 2020 understated Trump support by nearly six points.
Look, the 2024 race is not destined to have a polling miss or even have one that looks like (or about like) the error in 2020. It is much too early to come to that conclusion. So I don't want to go too far down that road. However, I do want to raise that in the context of this latest survey. But at this point, the more important factor is that there just is not that much to go in Iowa right now.
Does this poll present a race that may be closer than expected? Sure, but what is the expectation? That is where the lack of polling data comes into play. Based on the regression-based prediction for under-polled states that FHQ has been running this cycle, regressing the 2020 presidential results on the available state-level survey data, this Iowa Poll from the Register is a couple of points closer than the projected margin between Harris and Trump in the state.
That is to say that the poll is closer, but not as much as some of the other comparisons above might suggest. It would be more in line with the normal sort of variability one would see from poll to poll. And following last week's debate performance, one might expect a race that maybe contracted by a couple of points, drawing the vice president closer.
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