This poll will tell us a lot about Ann Selzer's honesty as a pollster. For those who don't know, she spiked the Trump +18 in June and likely wasn't even going to announce it all except that the result leaked out anyway.agjacent said:
Anyone else looking forward to the Selzer/DMR Iowa poll dropping tomorrow?
For those unfamiliar:
Iowa Poll will show if Donald Trump or Kamala Harris has the edge before Election Day
The Iowa Poll, a Register exclusive since 1943, is a closely watched indicator of candidate strength during election cycles, as well as Iowans' opinions on other important issues.
Does Vice President Kamala Harris have a chance of beating former President Donald Trump in ruby-red Iowa?
With Election Day right around the corner, our new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll will reveal whether Harris or Trump has the upper hand among Iowa voters.
Our last poll in September showed Trump leading Harris by 4 percentage points, a much tighter race than our June poll, which showed Trump leading President Joe Biden by 18 points. Biden eventually dropped out of the race.
The initial results from the November Iowa Poll will be published online at 6 p.m. Saturday at DesMoinesRegister.com. Those results also will be published in print in the Des Moines Register on Sunday.
For reference, she understated Trump by 1.2% in 2020 and understated Trump by 2.5% in 2016, for an average miss of 1.85% in the Democrats' favor compared to actual election results.
For the purpose of this exercise, therefore, I'm going to operate on the assumption that whatever her polls says tomorrow, Trump will likely do about 1.85% better in the actual voting in Iowa.
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Here's my take on what the different results would mean:
If she has Trump up by less than 7 its straight up bull**** and she's intentionally schilling for the Harris campaign.
If she has Trump up by 9 Trump will likely win Wisconsin*, and the Electoral College.
If she has Trump up by 11 or more it means Trump probably wins the presidential election by a comfortable margin (perhaps including a popular vote victory).
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My guess is she will hedge (chicken out) and publish Trump + 7-8.5, which would signal a close election that could go either way... that way... any range of possibilities from a narrow Harris victory (by running the table in the Rust Belt) to a comfortable-ish Trump victory (Trump popular vote with >312 EC) would fit just barely within her margin of error.
In other words, it will be as pro-Harris as she can make it without compromising her credibility (too much) as a pollster after the election results come in.
* Iowa and Wisconsin have similar enough demographics that they tend to trend the same way. In the last two presidential elections Trump performed on the average 9.6 points better in Iowa than in Wisconsin. If she has Trump up by 9 in her poll that means he's probably winning Iowa by 10.5-11 points, which means he's probably winning Wisconsin.
Vance in '28