An Update On My Iowa Article. With New Information From The Horses Mouth

First things first. My sincere apologies to pollster Ann Selzer. In my previous article I errantly called her Anne Seltser, for the simple reason that her name was not displayed when I saw the original segment, just spoken.

In the last half hour MSNBC just had Ms. Selzer live on their pre-election special. And she went into great granular detail as to just how she came up with this result. For instance;

• Her pollsters talked to more than 1,000 voters in order to get a likely voter pool of 800 participants. That’s a pretty hefty size pool for a state with Iowa’s population
• They only polled likely voters, and since the poll was conducted so close to the election, the criteria was simple. Either the person had already voted, or was committed to voting

Here’s where the plot thickens. In her lead in to the interview, Rachel Maddow pointed out that neither campaign had spent a dime on advertising, nor had any candidate made a trip to Iowa post primaries. So whatever is going on in Iowa is totally homegrown, and not a result of any campaign messaging. Iowa was ignored.

Selzer agreed with Maddow, and went into more detail. For one thing, unlike some/most other pollsters, her generals aren’t weighting the current war with the last war battle plans. Selzer doesn’t pay attention to the vote population from the last election. Instead she does polls on issues that resonate in Iowa, and tries to get polls made up of current voters who are likely to show up and vote. And that turned out to be the secret sauce;

• Selzer found in comparison with previous voter turnout polls, neither candidate nor campaign said or did anything that led to the swing
• Likewise she found that there was no specific swing of voters changing their population and switching from side to side
• Instead it turned out that the seismic shift was made up of new voters coming off the sidelines and getting some skin in the game
• Specifically there was a huge surge of new voters among women over 65, young women, and all seniors over 65. And they’re breaking hard for Harris

There are a couple of likely reasons for this. First, Iowa has a new 6 week abortion ban. The law actually passed last year, but it had a built in lag to implementation, then got caught up in a protracted court fight. As a result, it wasn’t until this summer when the law actually went into effect. It’s no longer theoretical, it’s law now.

Also, even though the campaigns may not be advertising in Iowa, it’s almost impossible to watch the news or read a newspaper without being pretty well familiar with Project 2025. And that includes Trump’s proposed dismantlement of Social Security and Medicare. And they’re voting with their wallets, even in the cow counties.

And here’s what I mean by Selzer’s group being the gold standard. In the last four presidential elections, and every US Senate race in that time frame, Selzer has been wrong twice. I wish I had her for my March Madness brackets.

Here’s how good she is. Later in the hour election savant Steve Kornacki went through her findings, and as I wrote earlier today, compared the demographic and age groups in Iowa with those in Wisconsin and even western Pennsylvania. If Harris’s message was resonating in rural Iowa, where she wasn’t even campaigning or advertising, what effect might it be having in battleground states that are being deluged with both?

Then Kornacki raised another specter for us hardcore political junkies like me. Because the same seven states settle almost every election, most major polling only concentrates on those seven states for presidential polling. Iowa gets a little more attention as its reputation as the first in the nation primary caucuses. But if this is going on in Iowa, what the hell is going on in supposedly safe states that nobody is polling?

Here’s just a couple of quick examples. For starters, Nebraska is not the place you think of as a hotbed of flaming liberalism. But according to prognosticators Harris already has Omaha-1 in her hip pocket, giving her that all critical tie breaking vote. But also, you have an incumbent GOP Senator who is nail biting a 2 point lead, within the margin of error against an independent woman. You never hear it.

And here’s a dark horse. Nobody bothers to poll Florida for the presidential cycle cuz it’s Traitor Tot’s backyard. And yet you have an unpopular GOP incumbent Senator fighting for his life in the margin of error, El Pendejo ex Presidente just pissed off a million registered Puerto Rican voters, and I’ve seen at least two pieces in the last month of large Harris Caravans of seniors driving their golf carts, festooned with Harris stickers and flags around the streets of The friggin’ Villages! Add to that a pro choice initiative on the ballot, and who knows what the hell can happen.

I’ll close with this. In my fairly long political life I have never seen a presidential election with so many plot twists and unforeseeable unknowns. So I’ll leave you with the two guiding stars I’m hitching my course to in these last days. F*ck the polls. The far right sh*t polls have skewed them beyond salvation. And also, never underestimate Traitor Tot’s ability to send even faithful moderate GOP voters running for the fire exits. In 48 hours we’ll be getting results. Keep punching and keep the faith.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.

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