What results, and that Iowa Poll, may say about polarized voters

DES MOINES — The 2024 general election results are in, and experts are digging into the data to learn as much as they can.

Among them is Christopher Larimer, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa. The Gazette spoke with him about the election results at the national level and in Iowa.

What follows is a transcription of that conversation, edited only for clarity and brevity.

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Q: What was your biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s election results?

A: There’s so much attention on those seven battleground states (in the presidential election), and those battleground states were close again in 2024 like they were in 2020. Those are the states that were within 3 points in 2020 and then this time around … it looks like the average difference between (Donald) Trump and (Kamala) Harris across those seven states is about 2.8 percentage points. So I guess for me, because I’m always interested in polling, I was focused on, would this be a good or bad year for pollsters?

And those seven battleground states were close in 2020, they were close again this cycle. … And that it was going to be a difficult year just trying to figure it out in terms of why the election went the way it did. Before Vice President Harris jumped into the race it was a difficult year for Joe Biden, in terms of there’s a lot of economic anxiety, (voters) think the country’s on the wrong track and so forth. I think that just shows how difficult that is to overcome.

Q: Speaking of polls, what in your view may have caused the big disconnect between what we saw in the last Iowa Poll (Harris leading Trump by 3 points) and what happened in Iowa (Trump won by over 13 points)?

A: Well that’s hard to say because I always look to Ann Selzer at her poll as — everybody talks about her being the gold standard for reading Iowa voters. I was surprised. I have no idea why that would be the case, other than polling is incredibly difficult and it’s getting harder every cycle, just to get people to respond, to identify who those likely voters are. And I don’t know what Ann’s process is in terms of how she finds who is a “likely voter.” Because that’s the whole idea, is you want to figure out who’s going to be in the electorate. And I don’t know how she does that.

But just given the difficulty of polling, pollsters are always off at some point. So to me it was surprising that she was that far off because she has such a good track record in the state. But I don’t know the details of that and I don’t know how much she’ll release on that. But it may have come down to just identifying who likely voters are.

The issues with underestimating support for Trump in previous cycles have been that pollsters have not been able to pick up voters who are more low propensity or less engaged voters, and there was also the education gap — those two factors, and pollsters tried to correct for that, I think, this cycle. I don’t know what sort of weight those two factors have in the way that the Selzer poll is done, but if I had to guess, maybe that’s where some of that is. But again it was a surprise to me because I always look to that poll as being pretty reliable in terms of getting a read on the Iowa electorate.

Q: Republicans in the Iowa Legislature expanded their majorities despite Democrats running on what they believed were unpopular new Republican state laws regarding abortion restrictions, private school financial assistance and transgender rights. Is it time to call Iowa a red state, or are Iowa Democrats not connecting with persuadable voters in a way they could be?

A: I think it’s probably a little bit of both. Because you’re right — this will be year nine of unified control (for Republicans) when they convene in January. And I was looking back this morning, I think you have to go back to like 1939 through 1956, something like that, where we saw that time period (with) unified control by one party for as long as we’ve seen it (during the current stretch). It’s hard to say.

I think some of that is also just having candidates. You have to be running candidates in as many elections as you can. Every cycle there are so many elections where it’s just unopposed. That’s not to say that they would win in those, but having a candidate helps.

I’d be curious if there’s anything at the federal level if there’s anything from the (Christina) Bohannan-(Mariannette) Miller-Meeks race (for Congress) that Democrats could pick up on at the state legislative level. And the reason I say that is, if you look at the margins in those rural counties in that (1st) Congressional District, a lot of those were kind of at that 58-42 margin or maybe up to 60-40. But in some of the other congressional races, for like (3rd District Democrat) Lanon Baccam, those rural counties the margin was like at 70-30. So is there something in (Bohannan’s) messaging that resonated more closely with voters than in other districts? I don’t know.

… So I don’t know what’s happened, or if it’s just the electorate is that polarized. And some of it may be that voters in the state who lean Republican, because it’s so polarized now, there’s less attention to particular issues and pursuing policies that may run counter to the electorate. But everything is so polarized that people are just digging into their own camps and policy doesn’t matter as much. I guess that’s what I’m trying to figure out, because there is some research that shows state legislators can get reelected (and) their vote margins don’t change all that much even when they pursue policies that run counter to public opinion at the state legislative level.

There’s a guy down in St. Louis, Steven Rogers, who wrote a book on this and it’s really interesting. So does that mean that these policy discussions, whether it’s the education vouchers, curriculum stuff, even the flat income tax, even if those run counter to opinion, because things are so polarized, are voters just going to keep electing people along party lines?

Q: Donald Trump won Iowa this year by even bigger margins than he did in 2016 and 2020. What, if anything, does that tell you?

A: Just looking at the county-level map, they look so similar from 2016 to 2020 to 2024. It’s those five or six counties that Democrats can win and then Republicans winning everything else. To me it shows the rural-urban divide in Iowa. If there’s a messaging thing, I don’t know; if it's a mobilization part of it, I don’t know. But it’s clear in statewide races for Democrats there’s a challenge there. But it’s hard. I guess I’m hesitating to generalize too much because then you also have someone like (Iowa Auditor) Rob Sand who can win statewide races. So I don’t know what’s going on there. I know that’s not going to answer (the question). It seems like there are a lot of factors there, whether it’s messaging, candidates, campaigns, whatever it might be there seems to just be a lot of factors coming together. And the fact that there’s not a lot of movement in some of these margins over the last three cycles, to me it seems like voters have settled into those party lines and it’s hard to break it from them.

Q: What else are you looking to study in the 2024 election results?

A: I think just trying to get into some of the voter turnout data as much as I can, looking at 18- to 24-year-olds, where was that turnout rate compared to previous cycles? Trying to get a sense of who was mobilized. … Doing the census: Was the electorate expanded in any way, or was this just folks who are normally reliable voters just turning out to vote, or are their new pockets that we didn’t see?

Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com

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