A new US election poll showed that US Vice President Kamala Harris is ahead of Donald Trump in the traditionally Republican state of Iowa, causing a shock in the presidential race before Election Day on Tuesday.
But experts still warn that the race overall is so close that no single poll — even from a source as reputable as Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer, using a different methodology than others — can accurately predict what might happen in November 5th.
“This is one poll, in one state, at one moment in time,” said Samara Klar, a pollster and political science professor at the University of Arizona.
“It’s certainly interesting and will be looked at with some interest (after Election Day), but we still can’t predict what will happen.”
Des Moines Register/Mediacom Poll The results released on Saturday showed Harris defeating Trump by 47 to 44 percent in Iowa, a state that Trump won by nine points in the last presidential election.
Although Harris’ lead is within a 3.4 percent margin of error and varies Other polls in Iowa show Trump winningThe new poll is notable given Selzer’s track record of accurately predicting the state’s eventual winner since 2012.
That reputation, along with the poll’s indication that women and independent voters are pushing Harris forward, has led critics to predict that other polls may underestimate Harris’ support in battleground Midwestern states like Wisconsin, which will decide the Electoral College winner.
But researchers and analysts remain cautious.
“There’s no way to know if that’s true,” said Matthew LeBow, a political science professor at Western University.
“It’s a high-quality survey that Selzer is trustworthy and has a good methodology and all that. But that doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Latest FiveThirtyEight national polling average Harris led Trump by just one point as of Monday.
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In six of the seven swing or swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada — there is one point or less separating the candidates, while Trump leads by more than two points in Arizona. AverageRealClearPolitics Among the seven battlegrounds, Trump leads by only 0.7 percent.
The averages are narrow because the individual polls themselves are so slim, the results usually fall within the margin of error — meaning the race is effectively tied.
Pollsters say the story the polls tell usually strengthens in the final days of an election, making individual “outlier” polls that break from that story arouse suspicion.
However, they also say some voters don’t make up their minds until those final days, or even actually cast their ballots.
“We’ve seen examples around the world where five or 10 percent of people make up their minds in the voting booth, and that’s impossible to predict,” Daryl Bricker, Ipsos’ chief executive of public affairs, said in a previous interview.
New York Times/Siena College Poll The results released Sunday indicate that of the eight percent of voters surveyed who said they had only recently decided who to vote for, 55 percent said they chose Harris, while 44 percent said they chose Trump.
Pollsters say Harris could outperform in the polls if they chip away at her support the way they did for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections, which predicted a stronger Republican wave in Congress than happened.
But Trump could also benefit if he underestimates where he was in 2016 and 2020, mistakes that polling companies say they have corrected.
Here, the Selzer poll can be considered either an anomaly or an indicator of a larger trend, Klar said.
“If an Iowa poll overestimates support for Democrats, what usually happens is all the polls overestimate support for Democrats,” she said.
“Polls tend to be wrong in the same direction across states.”
What Selzer said about the Iowa poll
Trump criticized Selzer’s Iowa polls and New York Times polls as “phony” and suggested that Selzer – whom Trump called one of his “enemies” at a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday – had skewed her data to favor Democrats.
In interviews with multiple media outlets over the weekend, Selzer defended her methodology and said she herself was “shocked” by the leadership Harris showed in her data.
“No one, including me, thought Iowa could pick Kamala Harris.” she told MSNBC on monday.
Most modern opinion polls rely on online groups of potential respondents, which does not immediately reflect the broader population. Pollsters will then ‘weight’ their data to correct any imbalance, and there are a few different ways of how they do this depending on a number of factors.
However, Selzer still uses an outdated survey method of targeted telephone contact to immediately obtain a more representative sample. She also used much lower weighting than her peers, a method Selzer told MSNBC she calls “forward polling” because it doesn’t take into account historical factors like past voting behavior and turnout rate.
“I think that’s why people are interested in it, because it uses a little bit of a different methodology,” Klar said. “People are now asking what is the best way.”
Selzer told MSNBC and CNN that her method was the same as that used in polls in 2016 and 2020 that correctly predicted Trump’s victories in Iowa, and responded to accusations that Trump deliberately distorted the data.
“I can’t see that there’s any benefit to me or my career in fiddling with numbers to make it look a certain way.” She told CNN. “There’s no upside.”
The Washington Post noted on Monday Although Iowa has trended Republican recently, Barack Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012, which Selzer correctly predicted. She also noted that Selzer had been incorrectly dismissed as an extremist figure before, during the 2020 election, which she was also right.
Experts say nonpartisan pollsters like Selzer deliberately don’t wait to publish their polls favoring one party or another, another criticism of the Trump campaign.
However, they say the timing could benefit Democrats by boosting optimism and turnout, which Trump is responding to.
“(Harris and the Democrats) want everyone to be concerned and make sure they get out to the polls, which is very different from Trump, who I think wants everyone to think he’s ahead so that if he loses, he can claim his money was stolen.” Lebo said.
