Is the Selzer Poll an outlier?
And if it's not, what it portends for the GOP
In case you missed it, there was a poll out of Iowa, commissioned by the Des Moines Register, showing Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in the Hawkeye State 47% to 44%.
That can’t be right..right?
First, the pollster, Ann Selzer, is a very well regarded and pretty accurate pollster.1 Wait, that’s not fair. She’s an A+ pollster and no one knows Iowa voters like she does.
Second, Iowa’s image, nationally, is that it’s a small farm state in the middle of nowhere that gets way too much attention every four years in the month of January and then it disappears in importance for the next 47 months. Except, its four biggest cities — Des Moines, Davenport, Cedar Rapids, and Waterloo — have statistical area populations2 of over 1.7 million people. That’s over 50% of the population. Add in Iowa City, Sioux City, Dubuque, and Council Bluffs and over 2 million of the Tall Corn State’s population (about 3.2 million people) are either city folk or suburbanites. So much for its American Gothic reputation.
Third, the trash polls, which are either biased Republican ones or pure nonsense, have buried something that’s been ignored or buried by Corporate Media. The gender gap has widened to much more than a mere 59%-41% preference for the Democrats. The gender gap, which showed up in the 1992 and 1996 elections, became “a thing” that newspaper and TV newspapers showed some interest in reporting during the Bush/Gore race.
Since 2000, there’s been a gender lopsidedness among Generation X and Boomer voters politically — women vote Team Blue and men lean Red. [Among Generations Y and Z, there’s a political lopsidedness — its almost 2 to 1 Democratic for voters under 40.]
Jesse Watters, one of FoxNews’s talking heads and its leader in touting “toxic masculinity”, has become so freaked out that women, who have been free to vote since 1920, might not simply vote like their husbands that he said it was the same as adultery.
Jesse Watters ought to be more concerned that his mother is an ardent Democrat who supports FoxNews’ liberal digital competitor, Meidas Touch Network, and loves taunting him with its Trump reporting and commentary.
The Dobbs decision and the fact that the GOP lost suburban women as part of its base in the 1990s ought to lead to the conclusion that the gender gap among women is closer to a 65/35 split than a 64/40 one.
Considering Trump’s history with women and his creepy statements about women, it shouldn’t be a surprise.
If Ann Selzer’s polling is accurate, it’s because there’s been a significant overweighting of white males over 40 in other polls. Sounds like Anne talked to women from Eldridge, Waukee, Marion, and Highland and discounted the loud male voices from Lyon County, Taylor County, O’Brien County, and Davis County.3
BTW: In January 2023, there were over 80,000 more women registered to vote in Iowa than men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Selzer
Combined Statistical Area (usually multi-county where a city transverses more than one county)) or Metropolitan Statistical Area
The first four are suburbs of the largest 4 cities in Iowa, the four counties are sparsely populated counties in Northwest Iowa and along its southern border.