The Republican pollster Rasmussen finds Terry Branstad enjoying a post-primary bounce against Governor Chet Culver. A survey of 500 “likely Iowa voters” on June 14 found Branstad leading Culver 57 percent to 31 percent, with 6 percent of respondents not sure and 6 percent saying they would support some other candidate. Rasmussen’s previous Iowa poll, taken about six weeks ago, showed Branstad ahead 53-38.
Click here for survey questions and toplines from this week’s poll. President Obama’s approve/disapprove numbers are 50/48, but Culver’s are 41/58. Even if you assume that Rasmussen’s Republican-leaning “house effect” skewed these numbers by a bit more than the stated 4.5 percent margin of error, this is obviously a bad poll for Culver.
I assume we will see some other pollsters survey the Iowa governor’s race soon. I am surprised that the Des Moines Register hasn’t published any new numbers on this matchup lately. Selzer and Co. conducted an Iowa poll for the Register the first week of June, but the newspaper’s coverage so far has focused a subsample of GOP primary voters.
Although Rasmussen has polled many primary contests around the country this year, he never released a survey testing Branstad and Bob Vander Plaats and Rod Roberts before the Republican primary. Post your theories about reasons for the omission, or any comments about the Iowa governor’s race, in this thread.
3 Comments
6%-ers
Who the heck to the 6% who are voting for “some other candidate” going to vote for? Jonathon Narcisse?
american007 Thu 17 Jun 10:07 AM
Libertarian?
If they remember Branstad’s record, maybe.
Polls usually overstate support for third-party candidates, though.
desmoinesdem Thu 17 Jun 11:09 AM
In reality
Branstad’s probably at 50% and Culver’s at 40%, which is much better than the Ras poll…but even with a (most likely generous) 16 point swing, by taking house effect into consideration, Culver is still down by 10 points.
As you say, this is a really bad poll for Culver, but then again, Culver’s probably not going to win in November.
Why did Rasmussen not poll the GOP primary in Iowa? The real question is, as you’ve asked before, why did no one poll the GOP primary in Iowa, with the exception of the Register? My assumption is that everyone thought it wouldn’t be close, so why waste the money polling? Now, it turned out to be kind of close (10 points is still a lot, though…ask Culver), but I’m sure the mainstream media and mainstream polling organizations felt that it would be a TB win…so why waste the money?
Other primaries around the country were closer, and therefore, it made more sense to poll them.
ghbraves Thu 17 Jun 10:48 AM