Iowa Earthquake

Truth and Consequences

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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For those of you who missed Friday’s Zoom Chat with Tom Schaller, I recorded it, and you can listen to it above. It was 90 minutes of political geekdom as Tom and I discussed the future of American democracy, the role of women in the 2024 election, and our sense of how things will turn out on Tuesday.

Seismic Selzer

I usually don’t post on Sunday … but we have some major political news.

I’m pretty sure no one saw this one coming …

Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump in Iowa — a startling reversal for Democrats and Republicans who have all but written off the state’s presidential contest as a certain Trump victory.

A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows Vice President Harris leading former President Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters just days before a high-stakes election that appears deadlocked in key battleground states.

There are a couple of caveats here. This is the Ann Selzer poll. She is the gold standard for Iowa pollsters and is generally considered one of the best pollsters in the country. Here is her recent track record.

Of course, this is one poll, and it could easily be an outlier. An Emerson poll from earlier on Sunday had Trump up by 10 points, but again, see above — Selzer’s track record in Iowa couldn’t be more solid.

But here’s the bottom line: this is an earth-shattering result.

Keep in mind that Biden lost Iowa by 8 points in 2020. If Harris were down 5 points in the Selzer poll, that would be terrible news for Trump (if he’s doing 3 points worse than he was in 2020, it’s hard to imagine that he’s doing better in Wisconsin, which has similar demographics to Iowa, or even Michigan and Pennsylvania — and he lost all three of those states in 2020).

So, if this poll were off by 6-8 points, it would still be great news for Harris. If we’re even discussing whether Harris is ahead in Iowa, it doesn’t matter what the outcome is in Iowa. She’s likely going to win the election.

So why is Harris doing so well … this part should really concern the Trump campaign.

Independent voters, who had consistently supported Trump in the leadup to this election, now break for Harris. That’s driven by the strength of independent women, who back Harris by a 28-point margin, while independent men support Trump, but by a smaller margin.

Similarly, senior voters who are 65 and older favor Harris. But senior women support her by a more than 2-to-1 margin, 63% to 28%, while senior men favor her by just 2 percentage points, 47% to 45%.

Trump is getting absolutely killed by women voters. This has been evident in polling all years. We’re seeing evidence of this in the early voting … and now we have a high-quality poll from a gold-standard pollster that says the same thing.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that if Harris is winning senior women by a 63-28 margin, one should probably assume that a small but significant chunk of those voters are Republican women. That’s another huge problem for Trump because he has such a thin margin for error, and losing any Republican votes will make it far more difficult for him to win.

As I always say with polls, take them with a grain of salt — and don’t overreact to a single poll. But considering Selzer’s record and the extent to which her results dovetail with what we seeing with women voters elsewhere in the country, this feels like a potential omen for where this election is headed.

I’m not making a prediction because after getting 2016 completely wrong, I’ve sworn off making declarative statements about the election outcome. But as for my hunch that Harris is going to win, that’s feeling pretty good right about now.

Are Pollsters Pro-Trump?

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I speculated that pollsters were perhaps overcompensating for underestimating Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020 … ahem (from Nate Cohn in the New York Times).

It’s hard to overstate how traumatic the 2016 and 2020 elections were for many pollsters. For some, another underestimate of Mr. Trump could be a major threat to their business and their livelihood. For the rest, their status and reputations are on the line. If they underestimate Mr. Trump a third straight time, how can their polls be trusted again? It is much safer, whether in terms of literal self-interest or purely psychologically, to find a close race than to gamble on a clear Harris victory.

At the same time, the 2016 and 2020 polling misfires shattered many pollsters’ confidence in their own methods and data. When their results come in very blue, they don’t believe it. And frankly, I share that same feeling: If our final Pennsylvania poll comes in at Harris +7, why would I believe it? As a result, pollsters are more willing to take steps to produce more Republican-leaning results. (We don’t take such steps.)

Seems like kind of a big deal.

Musical Interlude

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