A closer look at the Iowa poll

[Pototan]

Look, I'm as giddy as the next Democrat at the possibility of Kamala Harris carrying Iowa, but this poll signifies more than that.

This poll is an A++ gold standard poll. But, of course, it's not infallible. This pollster's worst polling miss in an Iowa statewide race was 5 points in a Governor's race. Her poll that year was D+2, the final result was R+3. Every other poll has been either right on, or off just a point or 2 either way. But her Presidential polls of Iowa have been used by pundits as a harbinger of the final result nationally, especially the mid-west and more specifically, the "Blue Wall" states.

In the last 2 cycles she had Iowa Trump +7. In each case, Trump outperformed the conventional polls significantly in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Once narrowly winning and once narrowly losing. and that 7-point margin was nearly exactly correct in Iowa.

So, let's say this pollster misses in Iowa by the largest amount in any statewide poll by her in 15 years, that R+5 in the Governor's race. That puts this poll at Trump +2. That would give Trump Iowa but would signify a comfortable win in all 3 mid-west battleground states for Kamala Harris. More importantly, inside the numbers, she has a +28-point Harris lead among Independent women in the nearly all white Iowa electorate.

I find a great deal of positive energy in this Iowa poll.

[Scruffy1]

1. Thanks for your post.

oOne of my sisters in Iowa couldn't understand how any woman could vote for TSF.

[calimary]

2. Neither can the rest of us women.

[Metaphorical]

3. This feels like signficant overestimation of Trump this time around

MSG killed his momentum, and I think that it also tore the facade away that he is really all that popular. The MSM is likely looking at the existing voting numbers and realizing that they are going to look like idiots on Tuesday. This is why I think you're suddenly seeing this mysterious surge towards Harris in places like the NYT that were so adamantly pro-Trump just weeks ago; they recognize that the efforts to make this into a horse race have failed.

I still wish it would be a blow-out, something so big that Trump is effectively outside of the effective range of challenging votes without spending a huge amount of money that I don't think he has right now. I'd really love to see what the RNC's ACTUAL cashflow is right now, but I can't imagined they've banked much of it (assuming that much hasn't made its way into Trump's legal fund to keep him out of jail).