Tipsheet
Premium

This Stunner of an Iowa Poll Is Another Loud Alarm Bell for the Biden Campaign

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  June 18, 2024 2:15 PM

I have not been especially eager to see polling out of Iowa because the results would promise to be, well, predictable.  Donald Trump carried the Hawkeye State in both 2016 and 2020, and did so rather comfortably.  A Trump lead in the eight-to-ten point range, therefore, would hardly raise eyebrows.  It would be par for the course.  And then the new Des Moines Register poll dropped yesterday, and both of my eyebrows shot up.  Yes, the former president was ahead, as expected -- but the margin and the incumbent's vote share were...not quite as expected.  If these numbers are anywhere in the ballpark of being accurate and predictive, they point to an extraordinary blowout in a state that launched Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and that Obama carried in consecutive general elections.  

Today, Iowa looks redder than ever.  We will break down these top-line numbers below, but for the moment, just feast your eyes on them.  I mean, my goodness:


Trump sitting at 50 percent in Iowa is not really a 'wow.'  He ended up at 53 percent there in 2020, winning by more than eight points.  He was just north of 51 percent in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, winning by better than nine points.  So it's not Trump's vote share that jumps off the virtual page.  It's the 18-point margin, fueled by Joe Biden languishing in the low-30s.  As the sitting president.  As I noted in reacting to this survey on America's Newsroom, perhaps one might try to dismiss these results as an outlier, but DSM/Selzer is considered the gold standard in Iowa polling:


To put a finer point on it, this polling outfit has been something of an outlier in the Hawkeye State in recent years -- but they've been a lot closer to the accurate number than their competitors.  For instance, in 2016, the final DSM/Selzer poll in Iowa put Trump up seven points.  This result caused shockwaves at the time because it was way out of step with the average, with at least one pollster predicting a narrow Clinton win.  Even with the "outlier" DSM/Selzer poll factored in the final RCP polling average predicted a three-point Trump win in the state.  He out-performed the average by more than six percentage points.  Four years later, we saw a re-run.  One pollster projected a narrow Biden victory.  The final RCP average predicted just a two-point win for Trump.  He then out-performed the average by more than six percentage points again.  And once again, the only survey that was even close to correct was DSM/Selzer, at Trump +7.  In short, DSM/Selzer has been by far the most accurate pollster in Iowa during the Trump era, and even so, they underestimated his performance both times.  It would be folly to dismiss the notion that Trump is indeed up over Biden by double digits in the Hawkeye State.  As others are noting, other Republicans have also over-performed their DSM/Selzer polling marks lately:


If it's truly the case that Trump is up huge (which doesn't feel like much of a stretch), as I said in the segment above, that's not really so much of an Iowa headache for Democrats as it is an upper Midwest headache for Democrats. Trump's internal polling shows his campaign slightly ahead in neighboring Minnesota, a state Republicans have not carried at the presidential level since 1972, the year Joe Biden was first elected to the Senate.  That was a long time ago.  Other nonpartisan surveys of the state at least show it quite close.  If Trump is in the zip code of an 18-point margin in Iowa, Democrats will be sweating in any number of other regional states and seats.  I'll leave you with this.  Six states polled, six Trump leads:

Recommended

The Liberal Media Is Seething Right Now Heading Into Election Day Matt Vespa
How Is Eugene Vindman So Bad at This? Rebecca Downs