News/Commentary

Experts don’t buy ‘shock poll’ that says Kamala Harris is suddenly ahead in Iowa

November 3, 2024 | | Print Article

One newspaper had the GOP crying foul after release of a “desired narrative poll” showed Vice President Kamala Harris toping former President Donald Trump in a Midwest state.

Like Florida in 2022, Iowa had lived up to the expectations of the Big Red Wave as Gov. Kim Reynolds crushed her Democratic opponent to win her re-election by more than 18%. Saturday, with only days remaining, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll contended the state Trump won by over 8% in 2020 and nearly 10% in 2016 would go to Harris with a result of 47%-44%.

“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” Selzer & Co. President J. Ann Selzer told the Register after Trump had lead President Joe Biden by 18% in June and Harris by 4% in Sept. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.”

So hard to believe were the results that fell within the margin of error, that many with their finger on the pulse of Iowa politics cried foul, suggesting the purported result may have run afoul of Federal Election Commission rules.

Among them was The FAMiLY Leader president and CEO Bob Vander Plaats who shared the results with his reaction on X, “This is a desired narrative poll. The @DMRegister and @jaselzer need to file a corporate contribution to the @KamalaHarris campaign with the FEC. This is not even close to reality on the ground!”

Likewise, Reynolds had posted, “Iowa Republicans are leading in early voting for the first time in decades, and have increased our voter registration advantage by 130,000+. President Trump will win Iowa if we vote and turnout our friends. Let’s prove the Des Moines Register wrong again!”

Adding to her commentary, Iowa-based BlazeTV host Steve Deace wrote, “To put what Kim says in perspective here, Republicans lost the early voting in Iowa by double digits in 2020, and Trump sill won the state comfortably. There is no Democrat energy on the ground here. There’s barely a Democrat Party here at all.”

“Those of us how have worked hard to turn Iowa red could not have done it without President Trump, because his popularity with rural Americans turned out to be the final piece of the puzzle in making Iowa a red state. Trump is the first Republican to win Iowa twice in a presidential election since Reagan, and he will win it a third time on Tuesday,” asserted the commentator. “As for Selzer, she’s had some big polling misses in the past. So this outlier poll of hers is either another one of those, or just confirmation she’s flushed her credibility down the toilet to reinforce a false narrative.”

Trump’s campaign had offered it’s own response to the polling in a memo referring to it as a “clear outlier” and indicated, “Emerson College, released today, far more closely reflects the state of the actual Iowa electorate and does so with far more transparency in their methodology.”

Emerson had Trump over Harris 53%-43% in Iowa.

“Unlike Emerson which transparently reports its share of partisans and the 2020 vote recall, Des Moines Register does NOT disclose the distribution of this information even though they asked it in their survey,” noted the campaign memo.

Meanwhile, as others tore into the results of the poll, suggesting it sought to sway voters ahead of Election Day, Trump had his own reaction on Truth Social as he wrote, “No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump. In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT. I LOVE THE FARMERS, AND THEY LOVE ME. THE JUST OUT EMERSON POLL HAS ME UP 10 POINTS IN IOWA. THANK YOU!”

Kevin Haggerty
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