Iowa Poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day. Here's how
Iowa Poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day. Here's how
The new Iowa Poll shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 3 points. Pollster J. Ann Selzer: “It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming.”
"The poll shows that women — particularly those who are older or are politically independent — are driving the late shift toward Harris.”
The registered Democrat said she identifies as pro-life but doesn’t think anyone should make that choice for somebody else.
That’s … pro-choice.
That’s the power of propaganda. As long as she is pro-choice in her voting, I don’t care what she thinks it’s called internally. Like the people who demonize Obamacare but support its individual policies. They usually vote against it though.
Which is why allowing the right to use the label "pro-life" was a cardinal sin of the Democrats' strategy
I'm literally pro-life: I support saving lives whenever and wherever it's reasonable to do so
But I'm pro-choice, because I don't think I should be the one to decide for everyone else which situation is reasonable and which isn't. Also, women deserve basic fucking rights and bodily autonomy is, like, the number one most fundamental right
We really ought to change the nature of the conversation: it's not "pro-life". It's pro-enslavement, pro-religious-tyranny, and pro-absolutism
I mean, do the democrats have any power to stop them from using that label? Like, sure, they could make a point of always calling them something else, but if they always use that term to describe themselves, then it will end up in the public consciousness anyway even if only from people asking what they mean by it.
But... But that allows others to handle things differently than you might based on the situation...
Surely politicians should be dictating who can do what with their bodies?
The whole article is worth a read, I picked up on this in particular:
Harris holds on to the support of nearly all Democrats, with 97% saying they will support her and 0% saying they will support Trump.
But she also gets 5% of Republicans who say they will vote for her over Trump. Trump holds 89% of Republicans.All you folks who are wondering why Harris was so eager to work with the Cheneys and other Republicans and move further to the center, this is why. That 5% probably makes up a good portion of the difference between this poll and prior polls (along with the 6% of Republicans there who woudl vote for neither.) Trump is trying to cast Harris as a far left, communist, radical choice. But when she is on stage with Liz Cheney, it shows everyone how absurd that characterization is.
If she does in fact win Iowa, and other states that weren't considered toss-ups, it will be directly due to that outreach across the aisle.
Saying this again for those on the back that may not be listening.
All you folks who are wondering why Harris was so eager to work with the Cheneys and other Republicans and move further to the center, this is why. That 5% probably makes up a good portion of the difference between this poll and prior polls
Astutely put!
All you folks who are wondering why Harris was so eager to work with the Cheneys and other Republicans and move further to the center, this is why. That 5% probably makes up a good portion of the difference between this poll and prior polls (along with the 6% of Republicans there who woudl vote for neither.)
This is exactly why Harris (and Biden before her) was careful to emphasize MAGA Republicans as threats to American democracy and not the Republican party as a whole, while the GOP desperately tried to paint that as an assault on every Republican. There is a nonzero number of Republican voters who can be persuaded to put ideology over party- the question is, is that number high enough to swing the election? So far, the answer looks like "yes".
Doesn't matter; vote.
if anything this matters more to democratic voters in Iowa. I don't believe it would happen but you never know, vote even in red states.
I am literally going to cry like a fucking baby if she wins IOWA of all places.
#VOTE!!!
Ignore the polls and vote. Just freaking vote.
I remember seeing all this Hilary crushing trump in the polls and bro won... Fucking vote and fuck the polls
No, you didn't see this poll predicting Hillary crushing Iowa.
The Selzer poll is one of the best, it only looks at Iowa, and in 2016 it was one of the few that said Trump was doing much better than everyone expected.
In 2020 it said Biden was doing better than Clinton, but Trump was nevertheless doing better than expected.
In both cases, it was spot on. And this year, it says Trump is doing far worse than everyone thinks.
That said... Go vote!
Anecdotally, I've seen a good lot of houses with local Republican candidates that don't have Trump signs. Some only have Trump signs.
I had made a comment a while back about only seeing Trump signs outside of my Iowa community. Almost immediately after I said that, there were a good chuck of Democratic signs starting to pop up, which is way more than the one or two I had seen previously.
I don't know that I've seen crazy amounts of flipping or anything like that, but it was a noticeable difference that I wasn't specifically looking for.
People are taking this one seriously because it was one of the few calling for a Trump win in 2016 while all the other polls got it wrong.
It's not a guarantee but she's been wrong by at most 5 points before. It's a really good sign for Harris.
That said everyone should take the Mike Murphy poll of "my candidate is down by 1 point go fucking vote"
It's Ann Selzer. If she has these results, I take them seriously.
I don't know who Ann Selzer is, can someone give me a rundown?
From Nate Silver’s write up on this poll:
Yesterday, I complained about how so many pollsters are “herding” by publishing results that are almost an exact tie in a way that is incredibly statistically improbable given the unavoidable sampling error from surveying a small number of voters. I also noted a handful of prominent exceptions — rouge pollsters like the New York Times/Siena College that practically exist in an entirely different universe and imply a much bigger political realignment.
Another such maverick is Ann Selzer of Selzer & Co. (Selzer and NYT/Siena are our two highest-rated pollsters.) As my former colleague Clare Malone wrote in 2016, Selzer — like NYT/Siena — has a long history of bucking the conventional wisdom and being right. In a world where most pollsters have a lot of egg on their faces, she has near-oracular status.
Emphasis mine. While polls were decently off in 2016 and 2020, Selzer’s were not, and reflected a significant underestimate of Trump by nearly every other pollster. This poll suggests Harris is being underestimated. If Selzer is correct, Harris wins very comfortably.
It’s hard to explain how unexpected this result is. Harris proponents like myself were hoping for Trump +8-9 or less, which would correlate to a Harris win in the electoral college. You can still see this on r/fivethirtyeight from the bad site. I’m not optimistic and my best hope was Trump +7. People misread this as Trump +3 and were still celebrating. Headlines aren’t exaggerating here: this is a truly shocking poll. If the real result is even Trump +5, he is likely to have lost handily. If this is as accurate as Selzer has been since 2012, he will have lost in a true landslide. (Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, of course.)
I’ll link again Silver’s article on herding because it makes a strong case that most polls are not currently reliable due to self-preservation. Selzer releasing these results is not a self preserving move and would be a large pockmark on her otherwise “near-oracular” record.
You can scroll through my history and see that I am not an optimistic person. I initially assumed a Harris loss before Biden dropped out because RFK was still polling too well, a traditional indicator of loss when dropping incumbent status. I was pleased with her upward momentum— and still am, she deserves a great deal of credit for an excellent campaign— but she has always been the underdog in my mind. This is the most positive sign I’ve seen all season. It helps that Siena’s most recent PA poll was also quite positive at Harris +4 if I recall.
I’m too worried to be hopeful, but this has made it harder to doom. It’s so unexpected that I take it with a grain of salt, but if she’s even half right, things are a lot better than they feel.
Harris holds on to the support of nearly all Democrats, with 97% saying they will support her and 0% saying they will support Trump.
But she also gets 5% of Republicans who say they will vote for her over Trump. Trump holds 89% of Republicans.
The poll shows a small universe of people who say they previously supported Trump and have now switched their vote to someone else.
Among those not supporting Trump, 16% say there was a time when they supported him, while 81% say they have never supported him. Another 3% are not sure.
This is a factor that very few polls ever look for. There are so many reasons to oppose Trump which transcend partisan politics. We've had so many Republicans endorse Harris, but you don't see many polls looking for the voters that are making the same jump.
The implications are huge. Every voter that switches from Trump to Harris is a net gain of 2 votes. And if they are still registered Republicans, any early voting data will likely be interpreted with them in the Trump column until they are actually counted. And of course, any voter turnout efforts paid for by the Trump campaign will likely be turning these people out as well, which is just delightful.
We'll see how accurate this is on Tuesday. But if Iowa really does go blue, it seems likely that it won't be the only surprise that night.
If Iowa goes blue, then the election overall is very likely going to be a landslide for Harris.
Vote anyway if anyone hasn't yet. Because no matter if it's close, a few points, or a sweep Trump is already planning on calling it rigged (he already has) and rallying his supporters to do who knows what. It's going to be a long few months, maybe more.
Also, don't forget that voting just gets a preferred candidate into office, you still have to remind and pressure them on topics you feel important, regularly. I think this is really where America fails as a representative democracy, most people don't follow up on what they were all hyped up about during an election.
Iowa gets 6 electoral votes, same as Nevada, for those curious.
Edit: addendum: "wtf"
This dude has evangelicals in his base and mimes a blow job days before the election and he still might win. We live in interesting times.
He could give actual blowjobs on stage after getting the words "filthy whore" tattooed on his forehead and it wouldn't crack the top ten things he's done to drive away potential voters.
Lauren Bobart and Beetlejuice agree!
they all sound weird
duuuuuude if this is happening in iowa, could it also be happening in other redish states.. florida maybe?
Never estimate Florida, it will always disappoint
Orlando and Miami (and Tampa) do a lot to push blue, esp the surprisingly queer Orlando.
Florida used to be blue. Will it be again? We’ll see, but I’ll tell you that Floridians are sick to death of their current leadership. Change is coming.
Abortion and recreational weed are in the ballot as amendments this election. I know I voted for both.
There was a recent poll in Kansas that had Trump up 4 points, with a 4-point margin of error, in a state that he won by 15 points in 2020. Do I think my home state is actually going to go blue this election? No...but polls like these suggest the rural vote (in particular farmers, who for whatever else you might have to say about them, tend to at least have a political instinct for financial self-preservation that other rural voters seem to lack) not breaking nearly as heavily in his favor as it did last cycle.
Inject this straight into my veins
If this shift is both A)right and B) representative across states, Harris is looking at over 400 electoral votes on Tuesday. I feel crazy just typing that
As great as it would be if she won Iowa, this is the most obvious outlier poll that ever existed. Almost nobody's even polling Iowa because it's not close, and the few polls other than this one show Trump as a clear winner.
I hope I'm wrong, but I've been seeing thread after thread of these one-off polls and just general "there's no way Harris can lose" mentality. She had a huge lead around the time she announced Walz, but it's been downhill since then. Most reliable predictors have her losing at this point. That sucks, but it doesn't help to pretend it's not happening.
Do what you can to get Harris the win, but also consider what your options are if she doesn't.
This is a BIG deal. Selzer was spot on in 2016, 2020, and 2022. This poll is the gold standard. Even if it's off by 4 with Trump winning Iowa, which would be well outside Selzer's typical margin of error, it would point to a huge herding and overestimation of other polls toward Trump in the Rust Belt. If this is spot on, this election would probably have Harris win with the biggest landslide since 1988.
Frick it locking in, if the early voting data saw this coming days ago I'm not ignoring what else they have. My prediction. SOMEHOW, THE ORIGINAL SWING STATES RETURNED. WE CAME FOR THEIR FIRST IN LINE SPOTS AND THEY SAID "NO U"
(This is basically the early voting data except swung slightly right to account for the right wing edge on election day. Iowa and New Hampshire are the weakest blue states and Georgia and North Carolina are the weakest red states in early voting right now. Yes this is insanely weird, but fuck it let's follow this data off the cliff)
I will say I noticed a couple days ago on Reddit(zero clue the method used tho) that Iowa was the ONLY outlier among Early Voting/Mail In Voting results. All the blue states had blue leanings, all the red states had red leanings, swing states were split: Rust Belt Blue, Sun Belt Red, except for Georgia which was too close to call due to their lack of transparency and overall closeness. Iowa was more blue thanks to early voting. Only outlier.
On the one hand, this poll suggests that wasn't an outlier. It FEELS weird because Iowa was considered the right most of the 'weak red' bloc, Florida and Ohio and Texas were discussed WAY more as potential pickups and got way more polling, Iowa got the least attention of them.
However I also note on the other hand the early voting data suggests Iowa is an outlier and this isn't suggestive of a Kamala sweep. This could be because-
- Iowa has some of the harshest Anti-Abortion laws in the country and isn't deep deep red like the comparable ones. That's on the ballot.
- Iowa is right next to Minnesota and Tim Walz is jacking up the numbers, Iowa is old white country and Tim Walz is perfect for that.
- Due to the lack of Democrat investment that Ohio and Texas and Florida saw there was also less Republican counter investment, so it trickled left and both sides missed it with so little polling there.
If you think Iowa indicates that nationwide trends are super wrong then you also have to ignore the early voting data that hinted at a bluer Iowa days ago because everything else on that chart is falling to expectation. That data still has Texas/Florida/Ohio Red and suggests the sun belt is going Red outside of maaaaaaybe Georgia which is tight. There are also a few other Iowa polls all showing it still safely red so it could just be super close/future swing state rather than blue this time.
Maybe it is a nationwide trend, maybe it is, but my gut says it's a mix of lack of red investment and lack of blue polling interest as it wasn't as seemingly close as places like Florida or Texas, and two huge Iowa specific factors being extreme anti-abortion laws nearly unrivaled nationally and Tim Walz being from right next door and appealing to the Iowa bloc massively.
What it would signal otherwise is that Tim Walz is doing a great job shoring up the white vote in the Rust Belt and that probably secures Wisconsin which ALSO borders Minnesota and has a lot of the same factors as Iowa. The early voting data says they're losing the Sun Belt so they need to hold the Rust Belt. Iowa going blue and everything else going to plan would funnily enough make Nevada actually matter again. They're both worth 6 points so Nevada going red(which otherwise was useless in basically any scenario, Republicans would either win without it or NV wouldn't save them otherwise) would neutralize Iowa being lost and turn a couple scenarios from narrow losses to narrow wins.
Nevada was also the bluest of the 7 swing states historically and yet is the reddest in early voting so....trends can swing. The bluest swing state is suddenly the reddest and the reddest of the 4 'weak red' states is suddenly the bluest. Dems are strengthing their black and white women numbers while they bleed Arabs and Hispanic men.
(Oh and RFK Jr couldn't get off the ballot there, while he DID in Florida/Ohio/Texas. That's another factor alongside Tim Walz and Draconic Abortion laws for why Iowa specifically)
