A new poll dropped recently that had Twitter abuzz. The result was unexpected, outside the norm, and people wondered if it might mean change was afoot in the midterm.
No, not The New York Times/Siena poll, the Iowa Des Moines Register poll conducted by Selzer & Co. showing seven-term GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley leading his Democratic rival, retired U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Franken, by just three points, 46%-43%.
The poll, released Saturday, showed a much tighter Iowa Senate race than anyone thought possible and cut against the recent Beltway media narrative that Republicans have regained momentum. It's not the first time storied pollster J. Ann Selzer has killed D.C. conventional wisdom. Several days before the 2020 election, her firm published a poll showing Donald Trump leading Iowa by 7 points—much better than other polls—and giving incumbent GOP Sen. Joni Ernst a more comfortable 4-point lead over her Democratic rival, Theresa Greenfield.
Election Day proved Selzer right, with Trump taking Iowa by 8 points and Ernst rather handily notching a nearly 7-point win over Greenfield. But Given Selzer's history, one would think analysts might get curious about what she is seeing. Instead, some ignored the poll entirely while others erred on the side of dismissive.
"There’s a lot of mythology around the Selzer poll but it’s still just one poll," tweeted FiveThirtyEight's Nathaniel Rakich. "It can run into an outlier sample just like any other poll."
True, it is one poll. But then The New York Times/Siena poll came out Monday giving Republicans a 3-point advantage among likely voters in the generic ballot, and guess what? It's curtains, Democrats.
"Independent woman voters favored Democrats in September by 14 points," tweeted CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski. "They now back Republicans by *18 points* — a huge shift in just a month.”
That would suggest independent women swung 32 points in a single month. Civiqs tracking of the generic ballot, which still gives Democrats a 3-point edge (49%-46%) among likely voters, does show independent women moving several points toward Republicans over the last several weeks, but 32 points would be absolutely seismic. Overall, the Times/Siena poll also showed women split dead even between the parties at 47%. Joe Biden won women in 2020 by 15 points. In 2018, Democrats won women by 19 points.
While some members of the press took the Times poll as gospel, Democratic activist Dana Houle declared the poll "gibberish."
"They’ve got men at R +5 (2020 it was R +8), & women—sit down for this—they’ve got women—who favored Biden by 15 points—tied at 47-47," he tweeted. "If you’re a pollster & you get women swinging 15 points toward Republicans [since 2020]—especially when it’s post-Dobbs!!—you start over. You don’t release that, because it’s obviously really, really, really, really wrong."
But Times/Siena did release it and, again, it's just one poll, as Rakich noted above. For what it's worth, Selzer did a much better job of nailing 2020 than the Times/Siena poll, which gave Biden a 3-point edge in the Hawkeye State and showed Democrat Theresa Greenfield besting Ernst by 2 points.
But for today's purposes, if you compare the Times/Siena poll to other polls fielded around the same time, Oct. 9-12, the survey's generic ballot R+3 result is an outlier. Here are results from a couple other reputable polls:
- Fox News (Oct. 9-12), RV, 44%-41%, D+3
- Economist/YouGov (Oct. 8-11), 48%-46%, D+2
At the end of the day, this midterm continues to be a competitive race that is likely to hold some surprises that go both ways on Election Day. No single poll at this point disrupts that reality. It's still possible that independents break one way or the other in the final weeks but, again, we won't know that until November either.
For now, Democrats simply need to run through the tape. Commit to voting early. Get friends and elders to the polls. If you're older, call your kids and grandkids to make sure they vote. If you're younger, host a voting party where you and your friends fill out your ballots together.
It's all still on the table and, whatever the outcome, Democrats are running way ahead of the dismal forecasts most analysts confined them to at the start of the year—or even November 2020.
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