Outlier or Early Warning? Late Iowa Poll Confounds
It’s never wise to jump to conclusions based on any single poll. But it would be foolish to ignore results from a quality pollster.
Ann Selzer shocked the political world on Saturday evening with a poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of former President Donald Trump by 3 points in Iowa, 47 percent to 44 percent. Trump won the Hawkeye State by 8 points in 2020 and 9 points in 2016 but Selzer is regarded as the polling gold standard in Iowa with a reputation for identifying trends that other pollsters missed.
Up to this point, Iowa has been nowhere near the list of seven toss-up states that have garnered the vast majority of attention from the candidates, campaigns, and the media. Even Selzer’s previous poll in Iowa, showing Trump ahead of Harris by 4 points in early September, did little to put the state on the political radar. Any talk about the presidential map expanding has come from a confident Trump campaign declaring that Virginia, New Mexico, and New Jersey could be within the former president’s reach. There was little evidence Trump was vulnerable on his right flank.
While the Selzer survey could be an outlier, her record cannot be ignored. Besides the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses, Selzer's polls have been remarkably accurate.
Selzer's final pre-election surveys in key statewide races have been within 3 points or less of the final margin in five of the last six election cycles going back to 2012, according to data compiled by Matthew Klein…
