How did the Iowa Poll get it so wrong?

DES MOINES, Iowa (Gray Media Iowa State Capitol ) - Election 2024 voters painted Iowa an even darker shade of “Republican red,” despite a once-revered poll that showed that it would be Democrats that had the momentum.

Donald Trump, the Republican former president making his third run for the position, beat Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat’s presidential nominee, by more than 13% according to unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State.

See updated Election 2024 results from the Iowa Secretary of State here.

Trump’s margin of victory dwarfed his previous results in Iowa, where he won by nine points in 2016 and eight points in 2020. The Des Moines Register Iowa Poll released Saturday showed Harris with a three-point advantage over Trump with likely registered voters.

That poll shocked political observers across the country because most did not expect Iowa’s results to be close in the presidential race.

See the Des Moines Register Iowa Poll from Saturday that showed Trump trailing Harris.

J. Ann Selzer’s Iowa Poll had previously been lauded as the “gold standard” because of its ability to accurately predict elections and detect activity late in the campaigns that later become apparent in the final election votes.

But Republican candidates made a mockery of the poll results in 2024 in Iowa, not only with Trump’s dominate performance, but also with the likelihood that all four Republican incumbent U.S. house members would win re-election and that Republicans in both chambers of the Iowa Legislature would expand their already enormous majorities.

Selzer and the Des Moines Register editor both released statements addressing the failure of the poll. Read that here.