Quinnipiac University released more results from its latest Iowa poll yesterday. I’ve posted some thoughts below regarding the responses on next year’s U.S. Senate race, the 2016 presidential election, and marriage equality in Iowa.

Quinnipiac surveyed 1,256 registered Iowa voters between July 15 and 17, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

The U.S. Senate portion of the survey didn’t reveal anything not seen in other recent polling. Most Iowans still don’t know much about the contenders to succeed Senator Tom Harkin. Democratic candidate Bruce Braley is the best-known, but nearly 60 percent of respondents didn’t know enough about him to have an opinion. Of those who have an opinion about Braley, twice as many view him favorably (27 percent) as unfavorably (13 percent).

The prospective Republican candidates are still blank slates. Asked about Matt Whitaker, 88 percent of Quinnipiac’s respondents didn’t know enough to have an opinion. Joni Ernst: 92 percent. Mark Jacobs: 94 percent. David Young: 92 percent. Sam Clovis: 93 percent.

I don’t expect polling of the Senate race to reveal much until next spring, when the campaign draws more media coverage and the GOP candidates are advertising ahead of the primary.

The headline news from the pollster’s perspective was “Obama Approval Plunges In Iowa.” Just 41 percent of respondents said they approve of how President Barack Obama is handling his job, while 55 percent disapprove. Quinnipiac’s first Iowa poll in May found the president’s approval numbers in negative territory but a bit less bad at 45/50. As the pollster continues to survey Iowa, we’ll get a better sense of whether Obama’s support is really tanking here. Since the president will never be on another ballot, I don’t consider his approval rating particularly important. Many polls found him below 50 percent approval in Iowa during 2012, but he still carried the state by 6 points last November.

I was puzzled by Quinnipiac’s choice of questions about the 2016 presidential campaign. Naturally, they asked respondents about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden, the two obvious front-runners on the Democratic side. The Republican picture is a jumble of lesser-known candidates, yet Quinnipiac asked Iowans about only two: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Presumably they wanted to keep the questionnaire from getting too long, but why only two Republicans? And if you’re going to include only two, why Christie, who has fallen out of favor with GOP activists since late last year? I consider him an extreme longshot to win the presidential nomination, if he even runs.

I don’t consider head to head matchups particularly meaningful at this stage, but for what it’s worth, Clinton led Walker and was tied with Christie in a hypothetical presidential election. It’s interesting to note that this poll sample had a positive view of Clinton (52 percent favorable/41 percent unfavorable), even though Obama’s approval was quite low, and Biden was in negative territory (42 percent favorable/49 percent unfavorable). Biden trailed Christie by a substantial margin and narrowly trailed Walker head to head.

Quinnipiac’s findings on same-sex marriage views were the most interesting to me. Respondents supported “the Iowa Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to get married in Iowa” by only a narrow margin: 47 percent to 44 percent. Yet asked “Would you support or oppose amending the Iowa State Constitution to ban same-sex marriage?”, only 36 percent said yes while 55 percent said no. Even a third of the Republican respondents said they opposed a constitutional amendment to overturn marriage equality.

A sizable group of Iowans isn’t crazy about the Iowa Supreme Court’s action in Varnum v Brien but also doesn’t want to turn back the clock to the days when LGBT couples couldn’t marry in Iowa.

You can’t claim Quinnipiac surveyed some liberal skewed sample. Remember, President Obama’s approval rating is low, and the same poll found that a majority of respondents view Governor Terry Branstad favorably.

Realistically, Iowa will never pass a constitutional amendment on marriage, since Democrats have an Iowa Senate majority, and the latest version of the marriage amendment didn’t even pass the GOP-controlled Iowa House this year. But in the unlikely event that Iowa ever did ban same-sex marriage several years down the road, 57 percent of Quinnipiac’s respondents believe courts would strike down the ban, while only 31 percent believe a ban would be upheld.

Todd Dorman commented on his blog at the Cedar Rapids Gazette,

So of the two campaigns that opponents of marriage equality waged – bash the courts and stop the weddings – one had an impact, while the other has proven to be a monumental flop. A fair number of Iowans, already distrustful and unhappy with government and public institutions for myriad reasons, have been receptive of the argument, though flawed, that un-elected judges went too far. Those Iowans bounced three Supreme Court justices from the bench.

But the crusade to deny hundreds of Iowa couples access to civil marriage rights has largely failed. We heard the dire predictions of moral decay and social problems and have seen nothing of the sort. We’ve gotten to know these couples and appreciate why they fought this battle. There’s no need to amend the Iowa Constitution.

That doesn’t mean the debate ends. But it is interesting to see a full one-third of Republicans now oppose an amendment.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.