A few of my posts have touched on the polling misses in 2016 and 2020 that led to relatively surprising outcomes in those elections. In 2016, polls underestimated Donald Trump in the Midwest, missing his eventual electoral college victory. In 2020, Trump was again underestimated, although he failed to beat his polls by enough to win reelection.
One pollster, however, predicted the outcomes in both cycles quite closely. And yesterday, she released her verdict on 2024.
Since 2012, J. Ann Selzer has conducted a statewide poll of Iowa for the Des Moines Register. Her record speaks for itself.
You’ll notice that Selzer’s average miss over seven polls is less than two points, reflecting an incredible level of accuracy. In six of seven polls, she correctly predicted the winner—and the margin of victory within just three points. Her largest miss was five points in 2018, hardly a terrible result by polling standards.
Perhaps even more important than her accuracy, however, has been her courage. I wrote in my last update that pollsters in this cycle appear to be “herding” toward a consensus of a tied election, presumably to avoid risking their reputations on an outlying result. This casts doubt on the authenticity of their data. Selzer, though, has consistently published data that goes against consensus—and, consistently, she’s been vindicated.
In 2016, polls showed Hillary Clinton performing solidly in Midwest states comprising the “Blue Wall”: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Clinton was also tied in polling averages in Iowa. Selzer’s poll, though, contradicted this conventional wisdom, showing Clinton down by 7 points in Iowa. Not only did this suggest that Iowa was not, in fact, a swing state, but it called into question whether other polls had been overestimating Clinton among the types of non-college White voters who could also be found in large numbers in the crucial Blue Wall states. We know the end of the story: Selzer was right; others were wrong.
Then, in 2020, polls showed Joe Biden with a large electoral college lead thanks in large part to an apparent turnaround with non-college White voters compared to Clinton in 2016. But Selzer again rained on the Democrats’ parade, showing Biden down 7 in the state, the same as Clinton four years earlier. This suggested that, if accurate, Biden had in fact not gained with non-college White voters, and his road to winning back the Blue Wall would be much more difficult than other polls had indicated. And again, Selzer was right.
That brings us to yesterday. Democrats waited with trepidation for Selzer’s poll, anxious that she would once again dash hopes—perhaps by showing Trump up by 10 or more points in Iowa, which would indicate an uphill climb for Kamala Harris in the electoral college. But the result?
Harris +3.
It’s difficult to understate the enormity of this result and what it means for Harris and the Democrats. As for electoral college math, it shows that Iowa’s five electoral votes may be within reach for Harris, a notion previously thought laughable given Trump’s high single digit victories there in 2016 and 2020. More importantly, though, it suggests that Harris may have done what Biden could not: win back non-college White voters in the Midwest who could restore Democrats’ Obama-level margins of victory in that region.
This might seem counterintuitive to casual observers. Biden, after all, centered his 2020 campaign on his relatable, everyman persona. He often emphasized his working class upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania and highlighted his cultural differences from the New York-born Trump. Harris, meanwhile, hails from San Francisco and would be the first Black woman to hold the presidency—hardly credentials typically considered ingratiating to the farmers and metal workers of Iowa.
Recall, though, that the Democrat who performed best among non-college White voters in recent memory was Barack Obama, another Black candidate who emphasized non-divisive themes of unity and progress. It may well be that the candidates’ ethnicities are distractions from what truly counts with voters: their messages. Looking back, one could make the case that Clinton and Biden, two White candidates, delivered messages that were more inflammatory regarding race—perhaps to shore up support among Black and brown voters—while Obama and Harris delivered messages of comparative unity—maybe because they were more focused on reassuring White voters given their own backgrounds. Selzer’s poll suggests that Harris may have, like Obama, succeeded in this regard.
Plus, although the Republican candidate has remained the same for the last three elections, his message has morphed through the years. Recall that in 2016, Trump often criticized multinational trade deals, which he blamed for the decline in American manufacturing—a talking point targeted especially to the Midwest. Now, though, Trump seems to have forgotten about trade deals. Judging by his rhetoric, he appears to believe that immigration is a stronger motivator for turning out his base in that region, preferring to bring attention to, for example, Haitian migrants in Ohio. But Selzer’s poll suggests that this may be a miscalculation. Have non-college White voters—the demographic most associated with Trump—soured on him in the Midwest as he has sharpened his attacks on immigration at the expense of other, more region-specific issues?
It may even be generous, though, to describe the late stages of Trump’s campaign, even on immigration, as “sharp.” If indeed voters are breaking toward Harris in the final days, as Selzer proposes, Trump can hardly blame anyone but himself. While Harris was touring swing states and reiterating a message of unity and centrism—campaigning, for instance, with former Republican firebrand Liz Cheney—Trump inexplicably threw a bizarre rally in New York City consisting mostly of surrogates taunting and mocking Democrats in crude and personal language. Meanwhile, he has resisted obvious moves to court moderate voters, such as mending tensions with Republican Primary opponent Nikki Haley.
Consider that moderate Republican women tuning into the election in the past week are likely to see Harris speaking alongside Cheney while Trump continues to snub Haley in favor of the likes of Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, at Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally, surrogates called Hillary Clinton a “sick son of a bitch,” and implied that Harris is a prostitute: “she and her pimp handlers will destroy the country.” Is it so farfetched, then, that women (and men taken aback by these comments) would be breaking away from Trump in the final days?
This is to say nothing of the newly prominent issue of abortion, on which Midwest Republicans have performed poorly since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2021. For instance, in 2022, a state referendum in deep-red Kansas would have stipulated that a woman’s right to an abortion was not guaranteed. The referendum failed by a remarkable 18 points.
Republicans are already claiming that Selzer’s poll is an outlier, not to be taken seriously. The poll’s shockwaves have been so significant that Trump himself has even weighed in, accusing Selzer of being a “Trump-hater” and a Democratic operative (ignoring, of course, that her previous results had been quite favorable to him). Her poll is indeed a relative outlier compared to other data in the region, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact, if other pollsters are herding their data in fear of underestimating Trump for a third consecutive time, as I’ve speculated numerous times, Selzer’s result could be a sign that Harris is in much better shape than the consensus has allowed.
Plus, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that no other recent polls have shown good results for Harris in the Midwest. A recent poll of Kansas from Fort Hays University with survey dates ending on October 28th found Trump up by only 5 points in the state. (He won by 15 there in 2020.) At the time of its release, this was dismissed as an outlier—but now, Selzer’s poll has validated it as a potentially significant sign of Democratic improvement in the region. Likewise, a poll of Ohio conducted by Miami University, concluding on October 30th, showed Trump up by only 3 points. (He won Ohio by 8 in 2020.) These supposed “outliers” now seem to be forming a pattern of bad data for Trump in midwestern red states, suggesting, of course, that he may be primed for a similarly poor performance among non-college White voters in the Blue Wall.
One can’t be blamed for treating Selzer’s Iowa topline with some skepticism given Trump’s margins there in the past two cycles. A Harris victory in Iowa, in my opinion, would still register as a major surprise. But remember that Selzer has never missed the final outcome by more than 5 points (and has only missed by more than 3 points one time in seven tries). Trump won Iowa by 8 points in 2020 and still lost all three Blue Wall states to Biden. So even if Trump beats Selzer’s result by a relatively high amount, achieving a low single digit victory in Iowa, he would still have very little chance of winning the demographically similar states necessary to win the electoral college. He needs to outperform Selzer’s data by around 10 points, a feat no one has come close to accomplishing since she started in 2012.
We’ll see if Queen Ann reigns supreme yet again.
–Jim Andersen
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