The latest Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register finds Republicans leading the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races and Iowa’s Supreme Court justices likely to be ousted. Selzer and Co sampled 805 likely Iowa voters between October 26 and 29.
Terry Branstad leads Governor Chet Culver 50 percent to 38 percent. That’s down from a 19-point lead in the Register’s September poll, but still a comfortable advantage. Culver’s campaign released an internal poll last week showing a much tighter race, with Branstad ahead 46-40. I had assumed Republican internal polling also showed Culver gaining, because the Cook Political Report just shifted its rating on the Iowa’s governor’s race from safe Republican to leaning Republican. I don’t think they would make that rating change if private polling showed Branstad at 50 percent with a double-digit lead.
Kathie Obradovich blogged tonight that Culver leads by 9 percent among respondents who had already voted, even though he trails by 12 percent among the whole sample. The Register’s other piece on the new poll refers to “the electorate’s conservative profile” but gives no details about the partisan breakdown of the sample. I will update this post if more details emerge about the poll’s demographics.
Selzer and Co found Senator Chuck Grassley leading Roxanne Conlin 61 percent to 30 percent, virtually the same margin as in the Register’s September Iowa poll.
The news for Iowa Supreme Court justices wasn’t much better:
A third of likely Iowa voters say they will vote to retain Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit. Thirty-seven percent say they will vote to remove all three. Ten percent plan to retain some. The rest either don’t plan to vote on judicial retention or haven’t made up their minds.
I thought it was foolish for the anti-retention groups to feature Representative Steve King in their radio commercials, but if voters throw out the judges, King will be able to take some credit.
Obradovich didn’t give poll numbers for the Congressional races but noted, “Mariannette Miller-Meeks appears to have the best chance of any of the GOP challengers to unseat an incumbent Democrat.” That would be quite an achievement, since Iowa’s second district has the strongest Democratic lean. However, Miller-Meeks has been campaigning hard, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s latest commercial against her is atrocious. It wouldn’t surprise me if that ad drives more voters toward Miller-Meeks than toward incumbent Dave Loebsack.
Iowa Democrats need to get out the vote and hope the Register’s poll contains faulty assumptions about who will turn out on Tuesday.
UPDATE: One positive sign for Loebsack is the large lead Democrats have in early voting in the IA-02 counties (pdf file).
SECOND UPDATE: The best news in the poll: Tom Miller 45, Brenna Findley 34.
Findley, a 34-year-old Dexter lawyer and tea party favorite, has spent more on advertising than Miller, who was first elected in 1978. However, Miller leads Findley among independent voters by 20 percentage points and nets a larger share of support from Democrats than Findley receives from Republicans.
4 Comments
Math
I definitely agree that Cook would not have changed his rating for the governor’s race if he had seen a Republican poll anything close to this. It does seem as though this poll may be a little R-heavy. Also, 12% seems like a high percentage of undecideds so close to the election — not sure what that means.
One piece of good news: while the sample size for the early voting pool was probably low, the fact that Culver is up by 9% among them is a good sign. There were about 1.04 million voters in the ’06 governor’s election. So far, 295,000 have already voted absentee. Not only is that 30% of the electorate, if Culver is winning absentees by 9%, that means he has a lead of about 26-27,000 among that group of 295,000. Since only 18,000 more Democrats than Republicans have voted absentee, this means Culver is actually winning independents who have voted absentee if that 9% lead is accurate (or close to accurate).
I’m not saying Culver will win, but I don’t think he loses by 12%.
pbs60 Sat 30 Oct 10:12 PM
it frustrates me
that the Register hasn’t published the proportion of Ds, Rs and Is in the poll sample. Comparing that to the proportions of people who have already voted would be helpful.
Obradovich did write that Culver has improved his standing among independents–Branstad must still be leading this group, but by a smaller margin than in the last poll.
desmoinesdem Sat 30 Oct 10:17 PM
register polling
i feel like the Register didn’t do the best poll in the world otherwise they would have no issue showing more of a breakdown – party preference, cell phone/land line users, and other demographic information which is really important. i don’t see how Independents could be tied in the Governors Race and Branstad have a 12 point lead unless they had more Republican responses.
i know you technically are not supposed to rely on internal polling from campaigns because the questions may have been misleading – but every experience i’ve had with internal polling was a much better glimpse of the electorate. internal pollsters want to continue to be hired by campaigns and if your polling is off you won’t be making money.
natewithglasses Sun 31 Oct 8:12 PM
the Culver campaign statement
on this poll noted that the Register’s poll was way off on the Republican primary–the week before they had Branstad 28 points ahead of BVP, and Branstad ended up winning the primary 50-41.
What I like about the Register’s polls is they always tell you the exact question wordings and order. I wish they provided more details about the sample, though. If Culver really is tied with Branstad among no-party voters, I don’t think Branstad is going to win by 12.
We’ll know in a couple of days who was closer to the mark. I remember being skeptical about the Register’s poll before the Iowa caucuses, but Selzer’s turnout model was right. For that matter, I was skeptical of the Register’s poll before the 1994 gubernatorial election, but they nailed that one.
desmoinesdem Sun 31 Oct 8:30 PM