Academic Pollsters

Kay Henderson

The upcoming Iowa Caucuses. Recent polling. Results of recent local elections. Two political science professors are here with their observations on this edition of Iowa Press.

 

 

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, November 17th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Two political science professors are joining us for this edition of Iowa Press to talk about presidential politics in Iowa and nationwide. They are Peter Hanson. He is a professor at Grinnell College. He's also the director of the Grinnell National poll. Welcome back to Iowa Press.

 

 

Peter Hanson

Thanks very much.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Dave Peterson is a professor at Iowa State University, and Iowa State has what they call a Civiqs poll. And welcome to Iowa Press.

 

 

Dave Peterson

Well, thanks. Glad to be back.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Also joining our conversation, Caleb McCullough of the Quad City Times and five other Lee newspapers in Iowa. And Dave Price, Iowa political director for the ten Gray Television stations that are broadcast in Iowa. Gentlemen, let me start, though. Let's go to Dave first. The Civiqs poll I mentioned came out this week. Just give us a synopsis.

 

 

Dave Peterson

Sure. I mean, the biggest takeaway is that this is still Donald Trump's race to lose. He was a little over 50% in this race. Well ahead of second place was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Former Ambassador Nikki Haley was a touch behind him as well. And then there was a big drop off before we got to the rest of the candidates.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And Peter, your national poll was released in October. What was the snapshot there?

 

 

Peter Hanson

That's right. So we did a prospective match up of Joe Biden versus Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race. What we found was a dead heat. 40% of voters favored Biden, 40% favored Donald Trump. But then we had 20% who said they preferred someone else. So that adds a lot of uncertainty into our results.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, speaking as someone else, Dave?

 

 

Dave Price

The fun part about having you two on here is that you both have polls, but you're also two smart dudes who know political science as well. And as you look at your respective polls, maybe Peter, start with you. What is something in it that people may miss? Like where you have to take a deeper dive into some numbers that are interesting to you?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Well, I think the key thing, as you know, the headline on our poll is that the race is a dead heat, but actually with 20% wanting to vote for someone else, it's not. That is one out of five voters. It's, you know, clearly going to decide the race. And if you dig deeper into the numbers, it's 30% of independents who say they want to vote for someone else. Now, I'd expect the Democrats and Republicans probably to come home and vote for their respective candidates. But it's those independents that we can't really predict who still matter.

 

 

Dave Price

All right, Dave, so you're focused on Iowa. What about you? What are we missing out of your poll?

 

 

Dave Peterson

The other big thing that we were able to do this month is that we went to the field shortly after Governor Reynolds's endorsement. And so we were trying to figure out how much did that matter. Did that shake up the race at all? Ends up it didn't. We asked people, did it make them more or less likely to support Governor DeSantis? And most people said it made no difference. But actually about five or six points, more people said it made them less likely to decide to support Governor DeSantis. That had made them more likely to decide.

 

 

Caleb McCullough

So, Dave, your poll is no outlier. Donald Trump leads every poll in Iowa and nationally. Nothing new there. What does your polling show about people's allegiance to Donald Trump? How open are they to another candidate?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Yeah, no, it's a great question. So we've been trying to explore this and try to figure out, you know, what's separating the people who are supporting Donald Trump from the people who are not. Right. And the people who are supporting DeSantis and Haley. So we've asked lots of questions about thoughts about the Republican Party or thoughts about major political events.

And the people who support Donald Trump are loyal. When you ask them, you know, what was the outcome of the 2020 election, they will say, Trump won. When you ask them about the indictments that President Trump is facing, they will say he's done nothing wrong. And over and over again, question after question that we ask these folks, the supporters of Donald Trump deeply believe him and are deeply committed to him.

 

 

Caleb McCullough

And Peter, I mean, maybe on a national on a general election level, do you have any thoughts on that as well?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Well, I have the same observation that Dave does. His support is durable. You know what I note about a lot of commentary on Donald Trump, especially from the left, is there's almost this expectation among Democrats that, you know, surely when this event happens, voters will, you know, come to share our perspective and their support for Donald Trump will dissipate. Well, it doesn't happen, right? That support is durable. It's robust. I have no reason to expect that that's going to change. And that puts him in a very, very formidable, formidable position for this race.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Peter, since you did that polling, RFK Junior, Jill Stein, and a couple of other people have said they're going to mount campaigns for sure. Do you have any idea where that might scatter people who responded to your survey in October? Is that too long ago?

 

 

Peter Hanson

When we posed our question, we simply asked our respondents whether they would vote for someone else. We didn't specify any alternatives. So unfortunately, we don't have any data on Stein or Kennedy.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Dave, your poll, let's talk about the surge, if there is one. Our friends at the Des Moines Register have found that between October and January in 2016 and 2012 and 2008, people like Huckabee and Santorum and Ted Cruz, there was a surge. Like double digit, huge, huge, huge surge. Do you see any of that sort of starting to build right now?

 

 

Dave Peterson

No, there's no evidence for it in our poll. So one of the features of our poll is that about three quarters of the people are re-interviewed every month. And so we did this in 2020 as well. And so we know in 2020, a lot of Democrats actively changed their mind. They were Warren one month, Buttigieg the next. This cycle, no one's changing their mind. Or the few that are are changing from that bottom tier of candidates to a higher tier. Right. They're changing, frankly, mostly to Donald Trump when they change their mind. But they haven't been shifting to either DeSantis or Haley yet.

 

 

Dave Price

Dave, you touched on this a little bit about Governor Reynolds endorsements specifically, and you know, whether that's going to move anybody toward DeSantis. Could you maybe put your both of you put your polls aside for a second and look at this from the political science side? I'm fascinated with what we've seen the last couple of weeks with people. We know Donald Trump demands complete loyalty, right? That's his thing. That's where it seems like things went south with Kim Reynolds and she wouldn't endorse him. But it's also one of the unique parts of this race to me in that Reynolds was willing to kind of sticker neck out and perhaps take a political risk.

We've seen a big group this past week of folks who are willing to do that with Nikki Haley. There'll be a bunch of faith leaders in support of DeSantis as well. Could this be a little different in a cycle where endorsements may matter in the sense that they might be saying, hey, it's okay to move on from Trump? Is there anything that makes you think that's a thing?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Not really. Not a ton. But if it does, it's going to be shifting support between DeSantis and Haley or, you know, picking up the handful of people still left supporting Asa Hutchinson or some of these other candidates. I don't think that's going to be a strong enough signal to the Trump supporters, right? Because Trump's more popular, right? Kim Reynolds is popular amongst Republicans in the state. Donald Trump is more popular. And so I don't think that's going to be enough to overwhelm the loyalty that Trump has.

 

 

Dave Price

You see anything nationally?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Well, I really agree with Dave’s assessment here. I mean, I think we've seen countless examples of various Republican figures trying to challenge Donald Trump and failing. Right? Going all the way back to Jeff Flake back in the first year of the Trump presidency. And the fundamental part of the equation here is the Trump base. Republican voters. It's not really what these other officials do. It's what these voters think. And these voters, as we've said, are very enthusiastic about Trump. Their loyalty is durable. And I just haven't seen any evidence that an appeal from another Republican figure is going to shake that loyalty.

 

 

Kay Henderson

How much of a of a risk was this for Reynolds and her brand, Peter?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Well, in my view, she did take a risk because I would simply, you know, look at the last six years and I struggle to find any example of a Republican figure who has successfully challenged him. So I think she's, you know, put some things on the line here politically. And my guess is that we're going to end up with Donald Trump as the nominee, and that's going to create some uncomfortable politics between Reynolds and Donald Trump.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Dave?

 

 

Dave Peterson

You know, I agree completely, right? This this this was a sign of courage by Governor Reynolds, right? She could easily have said, you know, look, Iowa governors don't endorse. No Iowa governor’s endorsed for 40 years. I'm going to follow tradition and do what everyone else has done. But instead, she had her convictions that Donald Trump was the wrong nominee for the Republican Party and she took a risk to do what she thought she could do to try to prevent that outcome.

 

 

Dave Price

The thing that I keep coming back to is that if you're looking, though, at between half, 50 and 60%, maybe depending on the poll, of folks who are supporting others, maybe just in our state, what that means. Because we essentially have the dynamic of an incumbent here with Trump and if half to more than half of the potential caucus electorate is thinking about somebody else, is that substantial?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Yeah, absolutely. Right? I mean, keep in mind, basically all of these caucus goers, or people are going to go to the caucuses in January, voted for Donald Trump three and a half years ago. So the fact that he's lost half of his support in the state to moving to other Republicans. They'll probably come home if he's the nominee in November. But the fact that he's not doing better, frankly, is the more surprising thing to me. I mean, if we compare him historically to other frontrunners, he's sort of in the same boat as George W Bush in 2000. You know, he's doing worse than Al Gore did in 2000. He's on par with Walter Mondale. You know, I think he's it's surprising to me that he's not actually doing better.

 

 

Caleb McCullough

So when you conduct your polls, what is your approach to getting a sample that is representative? You know, whether it's the nitty gritty of that, how do you ensure that your poll is accurate and representative of the electorate? Peter?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Yeah, well, it's pretty straightforward. We are a national sample. We get a random selection of American telephone numbers that we call. We have live interviewers who call our respondents. So because it's a random sample, it's designed to be reflective of the national population. Now, of course, we know that just through random error and the fact that older people are more likely to answer their phones than younger people, there is some skew in those numbers, which we then correct for with weighting after the fact. So that's our approach and it's a very traditional approach.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And we should also mention who does your poll.

 

 

Peter Hanson

Oh, of course, it's Ann Selzer here in Des Moines. We're delighted that we have that opportunity to work with her.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And she does The Des Moines Register Iowa Poll.

 

 

Peter Hanson

That's correct.

 

 

Caleb McCullough

And Dave?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Our approach is sort of the other industry standard. So the industry has moved from, you know, ever poll being the sort of phone calls with random sampling to a set of companies. And Civiqs is our partner with this. Who develop Internet based panels, right. So they figure out ways of getting people to agree to take surveys. They are constantly adding new people to try to get a little bit closer to a random sample because you sort of randomly select people to invite. And then because it's not random, the goal becomes to be representative. And so, you know, you make sure after the fact with, you know, like Peter said, with some statistical techniques of making sure there's equal representation from the four Congressional districts, you make sure that the age distribution in the survey looks like the actual age distribution in the state and a whole set of other demographics that we account for.

 

 

Caleb McCullough

And there is a lot of, you know, question about the reliability of polling given, as you mentioned, the phone call. People generally don't answer their phones as much anymore, especially if the phone number is unknown. So what do you guys think is the future of polling? Is it moving more toward this online direction?

 

 

Peter Hanson

That's a great question. I think it is moving in the online direction in part because of cost and it's easier to field, I think, those kinds of polls. Telephone polls are getting increasingly expensive. My view on the sampling issue is that as long as our sample is representative of the American people, then it doesn't matter if it takes a lot of phone calls to get that sample. What's really more worrisome to me is if there are problems in the data that are not easy for us to identify. So, for example, if Democrats are more likely to answer the phone than Republicans, we don't have an easy way to identify that or correct for it because we weighed against the census and the census doesn't track party identification.

 

 

Dave Price

Could you talk about the difference, if I remember right, about your polls. You keep a chunk of your folks that you stick with. So I'm always arguing we should talk about the difference in polls. Right. Don't just focus on what it is today. But look at see if we see trends. And I don’t know if we're looking for a mini debate here. But clearly, this is a difference in the way, you know, you're going random each time. You're sticking with a core group to kind of measure the change. Can you maybe talk about why you each go that way? Without getting us off course too much here?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Sure. So for us, part of what I was really interested in, in starting this project is why do people change their minds? What leads a person. And again, we did this in 2020, and that was one of the driving features of the Democratic caucus in 2020 was lots of change and the ability to re-interview the same people means we know who's changing their minds, why they're changing their mind. We can try to understand why they're changing their minds. And that's the advantage. And that's the other advantage of this sort of Internet panel where they have a set of people is that we can identify them again and go back.

 

 

Dave Price

What's a value of yours then?

 

 

Peter Hanson

I would just say, you know, as political scientists, we're interested in gathering all kinds of data in all kinds of different ways. The approach that Dave is taking with interviewing the same people over time is really, really good at identifying, granular change, trying to see what individual voters are doing. We're taking big national snapshots. You know, they both have value and we use them for different kinds of things. And certainly for research purposes, they'd be used for different kinds of things. So I don't really view this as sort of a competition.

 

 

Dave Price

Collectively. We're better off for the both of you. Right?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Absolutely. Yeah. And this is you know, it's nice when there are different folks doing different approaches, you know, So in the last cycle in particular, we tended to time ours around the release of the Iowa Poll. Within a couple of weeks. And it was always a relief when the Iowa Poll would come out like a week after ours and they'd be almost identical. I always felt very good when that was the result We got.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Dave, just real quickly, can you tell from the polling what turnout might be for the caucuses on both sides?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Turnout is tricky to forecast, right?

 

 

Kay Henderson

Especially with caucuses.

 

 

Dave Peterson

Yeah. Yeah. So I can't sort of say like it's going to be this percent. But what I can say is that I think it's going to be down from four years ago. So, you know, again, we're using the same sampling, We're asking the same questions, the same design. And if you compare. Our first question in all of our polls is, you know, are you going to caucus? And if you compare the responses of Republicans this time to Democrats four years ago, there's about a 10% lower turnout rate. Right? So about 10% of fewer Republicans now say that they will caucus in January versus Democrats four years ago at the same point in the campaign. And we also include independents in our sample because independents can caucus. And it's the same thing. Independents this year are about 10% less likely to say that they're going to caucus than independents were four years ago.

 

 

Kay Henderson

And you measure nationally. I mean, you can't predict this far out what turnout is going to be in November of 2024, can you?

 

 

Peter Hanson

We have a standard question. It's a likely voter question. We ask people whether they're likely to vote in the 2024 presidential election. If they tell us they definitely are there, they count as a likely voter. Anything other than that, we take them out of that pool.

 

 

Dave Price

What about issues? You know, we saw what happened in Ohio specifically when it comes to abortion. That's such a big one for a million different reasons. Is there anything that you're seeing in your polling that can help us figure out maybe Caucus first and then General?

 

 

Dave Peterson

There's not a lot of difference amongst likely caucus goers, right? So people who are going to show up for the Republican caucuses are pretty consistently pro-life. We have asked about a six week ban on abortion to do. Respondents approve of a six week ban on abortion? We've asked that every month. And there's been little change, which is a little surprising, right, because Donald Trump had said it was a mistake to pass a six month ban. And then the results in November indicated that it might be electorally a disadvantage to Republicans. But it doesn't seem to be swaying caucus goers minds on the issue.

 

 

Peter Hanson

You know, I think the big point I think we need to make here is there's the primary and then there's the general. What I see in our data is that issues that are really motivating Republican primary voters are not ones that are going to help them win a general election. Right? We know that nationally, Americans favor access to abortion early in pregnancy. Our polling shows us that Americans want access to controversial books in public schools, like books that include topics on gender identity or sexual orientation. We know that from the 2020, or rather, the 2022 election results, that Americans didn't vote for candidates who favored election denialism. And so this just tells me that the kind of issues that are really motivating the Republican electorate right now may be helpful in helping a nominee get the nomination. But they're not the ones that are going to bring in those independent voters and help them win the race.

 

 

Dave Price

Okay. So what about here recently? So we have Democrats wondering if the results of these super local races like school boards and maybe to a lesser degree city councils. Does that foreshadow something that there has been kind of a course correction? Is that wishful thinking or is there anything empirically that would show that? Peter?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Well, I haven't seen any systematic data about the school board results here in Iowa, you know, to know what they leaned one way or another. I saw the same headlines you probably did, suggesting that Democrats were doing well in those races.

 

 

Dave Price

In these nonpartisan races.

 

 

Peter Hanson

That's right. But I do think that our national data shows us that what started out as a conversation about parents’ rights in education suddenly morphed into a conversation about taking books out of public school libraries or changing school curricula. And voters reacted against that. We really see no evidence of a national majority in favor of those kinds of policies.

 

 

Dave Price

Going too far, basically.

 

 

Peter Hanson

Yeah.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Dave. Sort of on top of Dave's question. There are too many Dave's here.

 

 

Dave Peterson

Never enough.

 

 

Kay Henderson

But just talk about in Iowa in 2024, there will be no statewide election. There will be no statewide vote on the single issue of abortion like there was in Kansas and Ohio. I mean, are Democrats thinking too much about this?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Yeah, it's going to be less likely to help the Democrats in 2024.

 

 

Kay Henderson

In Iowa?

 

 

Dave Peterson

In Iowa. Yes, absolutely. In Iowa, you know, elections end up being about stuff right throughout the course of the campaign. We and, you know, both the candidates, the campaigns, media folks, commentators, we all sort of decide what this election is going to be about. And that shapes how voters choose. Nationally, it's probably going to be an issue and that may trickle down to this as well. Right? So it's likely that Joe Biden will campaign as a pro-choice president, but also campaigning for give me a Democratic Congress and we will codify abortion rights. So that might translate or trickle down into the Iowa Congressional races. And I'm sure the Democratic candidates will push in those races as well. But without that sort of single unifying state election, it's a harder fight for the Democrats than it is when, you know, when abortion is clearly on the ballot.

 

 

Caleb McCullough

And on that note, I mean, polling shows right now that voters in a lot of ways are dissatisfied with President Biden on the economy, on some other issues. Democrats did do well in 2023 elections. But, you know, there are some concern that Biden is going to be a drag on them in 2024. Is that showing up in the data? Is Biden going to be a liability next year?

 

 

Kay Henderson

Peter?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Well, what we show in our polling is that his approval rating is very low. I mean, it's in the upper thirties, which on a historic basis is a very, very poor showing. And again, we show him tied with Donald Trump in a head to head match up. So this is not a position that any incumbent president wants to be in. That said, I don't think the Biden campaign has really ramped up. We haven't seen an effort from them to start to really define differences between them and Donald Trump as a likely candidate. And we've got one in five voters who are still saying that the jury's out. And so there's a lot that can happen between now and then. And what I've observed of Donald Trump in the past is he has a very hard time assembling a coalition that represents a national majority. Right? And I don't really see that dynamic changing. I think Joe Biden has an easier path to winning a national majority and then probably a narrow victory in the Electoral College than Donald Trump does.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Dave?

 

 

Dave Peterson

Um.

 

 

Kay Henderson

You can just agree, if…

 

 

Dave Peterson

Yeah, I'll just agree with Peter. Yeah, I think I think everything Peter said is correct.

 

 

Kay Henderson

We have just a couple of minutes left. People consume news far differently than they did 20 and 30 years ago. As political science professors, what fascinates you about how modern campaign advertising is changing because of this? We'll start with you, Peter.

 

 

Peter Hanson

Oh, that's a great question. You know, one of the things that occurred to me, because I don't watch a ton of television, is there's a period of time where I stopped seeing…

 

 

Kay Henderson

You are one of the case subjects, right?

 

 

Peter Hanson

So I just I stopped seeing a lot of ads. Right? And then slowly they started trickling into social media feeds and that sort of thing. I think the thing that I find really interesting is how specialized campaigns have become in understanding what kind of platforms different groups and communities use, and really tailoring outreach to specific groups via specific platforms and having very, very specific messaging.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Is narrowcasting more effective for candidates than broadcasting? Dave, we've got about a minute left.

 

 

Dave Peterson

I think it would be. I think it is, right? You can tailor messages. You can highlight specific things for specific voters and you can reach people where they don't expect to be reached. Right? So when a political ad starts, everyone's eyes glaze over. When it’s on TV, Right? When it's a, you know, a break in the football game. But when it's in someplace where you don't expect it, that's where your defenses are down a little bit. And it may be a little bit more persuasive as a result.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Okay. We've got 10 seconds left. Do both of you think that Donald Trump will win the Iowa caucuses?

 

 

Peter Hanson

Yes.

 

Dave Peterson

Yes.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Okay. And also, I'm just wondering, what does that mean in New Hampshire? Is it all over, Dave?

 

 

Dave Peterson

I don't think it's all over. I mean, I think if he wins with a little over 50%, then that's, I think, not a great sign of strength. If either de Santos or Haley can put distance between themselves and the other, then it essentially becomes a little bit more of a two person race.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, I have to say to these two people, we are done with this conversation. Thanks for being here today. I appreciate it. You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at IowaPBS.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

 

 

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