Under is among the most fascinating response and evaluation of Saturday’s beautiful Selzer ballot. (We’ll maintain updating this with extra commentary because it comes out.)
A number of analysts have pointed to different comparable indicators in latest polling:
Soltis Anderson provides:
Two issues are doable: 1) This Selzer ballot is correct and we’re witnessing a fully wild inversion of the left-right era hole; OR 2) Trump-favoring seniors are sitting out polls this yr in extraordinary vogue and it’s resulting in some wild crosstabs.
RCP’s Sean Trende is warning towards decoding the ballot as far-reaching definitive proof:
Nate Silver notes that the Selzer ballot doesn’t have a lot impact on his forecast, however that doesn’t imply its potential perception could be dismissed:
Earlier than you get your hopes up an excessive amount of, one other Iowa ballot immediately from Emerson School had Trump forward by 9 factors as an alternative. Nonetheless, Harris’s probabilities in Iowa roughly doubled from 9 p.c to 17 p.c.
Nonetheless, the ballot had little impact on our topline Electoral School numbers as a result of Iowa has solely a 1 p.c probability of being the tipping-point state. On this planet the place Harris wins Iowa, she might be additionally cleansing up elsewhere within the Midwest, significantly in Michigan and Wisconsin, wherein case she’s already virtually sure to win the Electoral School. So more often than not, it will be redundant.
Nonetheless, to have a distinguished, high-quality pollster like this at a time when most different pollsters are herding towards the consensus suggests the likelihood that different pollsters might be lowballing Harris.
FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich provides:
Selzer & Co. has earned a popularity for outliers which are later confirmed to be right. Obama+7 within the 2008 Iowa caucuses. Trump+7 within the 2020 basic. However it’s additionally had misses, like Hubbell+2 in #IAgov in 2018.
On the whole, it’s best to belief polling averages over outliers, however be cognizant of the *chance* that the outlier could also be selecting up on a late development. I like to recommend doing the identical on this case.
Break up Ticket’s Max McCall and Lakshya Jain warn towards Harris landslide desires:
Whereas no different ballot has proven fairly this monumental of a shift, for those who squint, there are maybe hints of one thing comparable taking place in polls of comparable states. Harris has polled exceptionally properly in Nebraska’s second congressional district, and a few polls of Nebraska statewide present a shift towards her as properly. There was additionally a latest ballot of Kansas that solely had Trump up 48-43, a seeming outlier, however one maybe price taking a second take a look at within the wake of this ballot.
Does this ballot suggest a Harris landslide? That’s one interpretation we’re skeptical of — even setting apart the outlier nature of this ballot, it’s price noting that even a wonderfully correct Iowa ballot can’t say a lot about states like Georgia or Arizona, the place the whites vote otherwise from the Midwest.
Additionally, a observe about methodology:
The state’s draconian abortion ban might be having an affect, too:
And at Semafor, Benjy Sarlin factors out that the campaigns ought to have been paying extra consideration to Iowa:
For the primary cycle in latest reminiscence, Iowa has definitively not been handled as a swing state by both presidential marketing campaign. In the meantime, the seven prime battleground states have seen billions of {dollars} in advert spending, fixed visits from candidates, and in depth canvassing operations. For that purpose, it was my robust private prior earlier than the Selzer ballot dropped to not assume it will be as predictive of different states this time.
That stated, the Selzer result’s so beautiful that it raises a wholly completely different situation that does have latest precedent: A presidential marketing campaign failing to note a state that after appeared secure falling into competitors till it’s too late.
Members of the Trump group, in the meantime, will not be impressed.
