Talk Elections

http://www.suffolk.edu/documents/SUPRC/8_11_2016_Tables.pdf

Trump 41
Clinton 40

Trump 37
Clinton 36
Johnson 6
Stein 3

Conducted 8/8-8/10. 500 LV.

Well that goes against the grain a little...people in the Clinton team said that Iowa would not be easy and this poll confirms that

Hmmm, maybe IA is going to be tough for Hillary. Good thing she doesn't need it.

I think IA is slowly moving in the opposite direction of NH/VA.

Iowa is pretty clearly to the R side of the national average this election. I can't say I buy Trump +1 here, but there are definitely indications of this race getting closer again.

That's a good sign. Maybe there is hope after all.

He says, minutes after a poll showing Trump within the margin of error in South Carolina was posted.

It's a weak poll for Clinton no doubt. But the problem for Trump is that Iowa does nothing for his electoral calculus. Romney+FL+OH+PA would get him to 273, and Iowa isn't enough to replace the 20 electoral votes of PA that he won't be receiving.

Iowa is a mix of Illinois and Minnesota on one end and South Dakota/Nebraska/Missouri on the other.  It looks like that the trend may be now favoring the red (Atlas blue) direction. 

Eastern Iowa and the big cities like Des Moines are growing though. Western Iowa is shrinking.

Between 1/3 (2 way) - 1/4 (4 way) of those 18-34 are undecided. I have to imagine that a large portion will head towards Clinton over Trump.

Dallas county (Wealthy Des Moines Suburb) and Sioux county ( super religous Dutch republican stronghold) are both growing, and these are the two most important strongholds for republicans in the state.

But Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City are absolutely booming.

Hillary needs to take Trump's Iowa comment from last year and get some decent ads made.  She's done a good job here in VA so far with the disabled reporter stuff.

I lived in Iowa for 9 months back in 1993-94 and I cannot fathom why Clinton is doing so poorly there. Granted I lived in the upper northeastern part of the state, but still. Can somebody explain this phenomenon.

She's struggling with young Iowans.

The NYT article that said FLOHPA was the Trump strategy also mentioned both sides agree IA is also leaning Trump. But if they are shooting for PA, IA is irrelevant. It only comes into play if the go for the 'inside straight' of FLOH+IANHME2NV. 

I suspect they will continue to work on PA as plan A. But it's good new for them that if they have won FL and OH, they probably have IA too.  It just gets tricky after that.

Iowa doesn't look like many other swing states - it's pretty dominantly white. And unlike New Hampshire, there isn't that whole old school moderate Republicanism in existence.

maybe Iowa is trending hard Republican, but what i find fascinating about this poll is Obama's approval ratings are -7. RCP has his national approval ratings above 51%.

There's plenty of white working class democrats flipping for this election in Iowa. Obama relied heavily on working class voters to win Iowa in 2012 and Trump is bound to see some type of gain from a 5 point loss in this state with the way it's built.

Wow.  How stupid are the people of Iowa?

their party demographics are pretty much matching 2012's numbers - 33% Republican, 33% Democrat, 34% Independent. Exits showed Romney taking more Democrats than Obama taking Republicans, but Obama made up for it by leading among Independents by a whopping 14 points.

This time around, Clinton actually takes more from Republicans (11%) than Trump takes from Democrats (6%), but Trump actually leads indies by 6 (37-31, with a yuge 29% undecided).

Iowa has been confusing me, given that it's been a pretty consistent D+1 state over the last 6 cycles.  Right now, it's looking to vote several points to the right of the nation, which is a very sudden shift.

I dunno; maybe it would've shifted right the last two elections with generic R/D candidates, but Obama was just a really good fit for the state.  And being ripe with voters without a college education, it has potential as a Trump state.

It's interesting that according to this poll, terrorism/national security rank only slightly behind jobs/economy as the major issue facing the country.

This seems very different from in many other states, and even odder considering that Iowa traditionally is more of a dovish state when it comes to overseas military adventures.

Suffolk is not the best of pollsters. But IA seems to definitely be competitive from whatever recent polling we've seen. Does Seltzer generally poll around this time or does she wait for the election to get closer?

Anyone who thinks Trump will win Iowa is fulling themselves. Iowa is not the new West Virginia.

Anyone who thinks Trump will win Iowa is fooling themselves. Iowa is not the new West Virginia.

There may be a slow trend for Iowa going to the right. I think age will be the most telling metric in the years to come. It's an aging state and also gets labeled as a "brain drain" state--public schools are pretty good here so a lot of kids who decide to go to college leave the state for school, or go to college here and then move. There's definitely not a fast trend to the R side as some suggest. Honestly, I think if it was Clinton vs. any other republican, Iowa would flip this year. If it had been Sanders vs. any republican, I think the state would have been lean D.

I would think the WDM suburbs wouldn't be friendly to Trump even if it's a republican area? It's more of a Romney/Rubio area. I doubt Trump out performs Romney there.

I still think if it's this close on election day the tie will go to Clinton. Mentioned this in another thread once--if IA-4 (who we can all thank for Steve King) joined another state we'd be lean D ;)

It's also Trump under 45. McCain and Romney both got within 10, and I can easily see Trump getting 46 in Iowa and losing in a binary race.

In 2008 I saw polls in which Obama had a bare led in such states as North Dakota and South Dakota (let us say 43-41) only to lose. Obama ended up with 46% of the vote, which was not enough.

Iowa is close enough to being a battleground even in a good year for Democrats that one cannot assume that the state will go Democratic. Kerry lost Iowa in 2004, and Gore barely won it in 2000. Could it be that Barack Obama is an unusually-good match for Iowa and Hillary Clinton isn't?