I'd put both in the Likely GOP column

It's hard for me to picture state GOP faves like Grassley and Branstad not claiming victory in this cycle, but I suppose Conlin's a decent Dem recruit and Culver's not THAT horribly unpopular.

For daily political commentary, visit me at http://polibeast.blogspot.com/ and http://twitter.com/polibeast

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by: andyroo312 @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 03:16:35 AM UTC

no way is IA-Gov likely GOP

I agree with that rating for the Senate race, but I think you are underestimating Culver's chances.

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by: desmoinesdem @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 03:32:02 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Both these races are winnable

though Iowa is easily Team Red's best duo (assuming Branstad wins the primary).

I suspect the Iowa Gov race is going to take a turn like California's.  It is all Team Red now, but once Team Red moves from criticizing the Dems to gutting each other, people start to move back to the center and Team Blue.

If we had Visack against Grassley, Iowa would be the marquee state of this cycle, but even with Conlin these races should be winnable... if the Dems act like a responsible party for the next six months, as opposed to the chaotic mess of the six months around Christmas.

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by: tommypaine @ Sat May 08, 2010 at 00:41:28 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

R2K changed their sampling method at the beginning of March.

So that might have something to do with the shake-up.

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!

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by: LookingOver @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 03:24:19 AM UTC

Ah crikey

I do seem to recall that.

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by: DavidNYC @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 04:50:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

BTW

Where did you read about that?

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by: DavidNYC @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 04:54:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Write to Steve Singsier on dailykos about that.

I don't know whether the change in metrics is in BOTH their weekly polling and  all other polling.

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!

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by: LookingOver @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 05:06:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Are you thinking

Of this? I believe that only affected the national tracker.

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by: DavidNYC @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 05:10:42 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

remember this about IA-Gov

The three Republican candidates have been criss-crossing the state bashing Culver non-stop for months. They've had lots of coverage in local press/media bashing Culver. Branstad has been on the air for about four weeks with ads in all the major Iowa markets. Honestly, I am surprised Culver has made up any ground in this poll.

I expect another Des Moines Register poll by Selzer before the June 8 primary. It will be interesting to see the Culver/Branstad numbers there. Culver was extremely low in the last Selzer poll in January.

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by: desmoinesdem @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 03:30:01 AM UTC

Well, not so bad, really

Compared with previous  minus 21 for Conlin and minus 16 for Culver - almost great. Leans Republican for Governor and, probably, likely Republican for Senate (taking into account Grassley experience), but nothing lost yet...

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by: smoltchanov @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 10:47:45 AM UTC

David I don't see how you can dis the numbers here......

You can argue that this poll is an outlier and not to be trusted, but you can't dis the results for Culver on their own terms.  Your Dukakis parallel makes no sense.  It would make sense if this poll were in late October, when it's too late.  But 6 months out, shaving the deficit in half is HUGE and stunning.

That said, desmoinesdem's caution in her comment below is a wise one, in suggesting R2K might be way off here.  There's nothing I know of (and I'm a native Iowan with family there and I still pay attention to what goes on) going on in the state that suggests the trajectory of the race should've changed in Culver's favor in recent weeks.

But, if there's one rational explanation for Culver's improved numbers, it could be an improving economy.  Other pollsters, even Rasmussen in a couple places, have had better numbers for Democrats in a few recent polls in other states, and the improving economy might be a factor.

Of course, the flip side is that the seeming improvement for us is just meaningless statistical noise, and this new R2K poll in particular an erroneous outlier......we can't write off that possibility.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 12:15:07 PM UTC

Don't forget

That February was pretty much the low point for all Democratic numbers and expectations thus far this cycle. That could have something to do with it.

Possibly the highly publicized "Death Panel" thing stuck in people's heads in October showing less support for Grassley. Purely speculation here though.

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by: KainIIIC @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 16:52:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sure regarding February, but that just begs the question...

...WHY a turnaround since then?

I'm not arguing with you, I think we both appear to agree it's the economy improving.

And health care reform, while not providing the immediate polling "bump" many of us thought it would, is helping simply by virtue of being in the rear view mirror.  Time heals wounds, it's not just a cliche, it's reality.  But that also explains why Rahm Emmanuel wanted it done and signed into law in November 2009, as he figured last summer it would take a year to sell the idea.

Regarding Grassley, his parroting of "death panels" is now too dated to matter, and even though he recently got minor coverage for repeating the notion, it wasn't widely publicized this time.

But R2K isn't alone in showing Grassley in decline, as Rasmussen just days ago showed the same thing, with his lead down to 53-40.  Remember R2K's showing of 49-40 is effectively intepreted as the same result, when you factor in major differences in methodology.  So something surely is going on to sour Iowans on Grassley now that didn't happen before.

I'm still not confident Conlin can knock him off, but if Culver shows true polling improvement over this spring and summer, and Conlin's presence and polling strength helps gin up base Democratic turnout, then we got a shot at doing a lot better in Iowa than I thought even just this past weekend.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 17:11:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

noticed something weird about the sample

Lifting from my Bleeding Heartland post:

One problem with the poll is the partisan makeup of the sample: 33 percent Democrats, 29 percent Republicans and 38 percent Independents. That's quite different from the proportion of Iowans who cast votes in the 2006 general election (pdf file available here): 37 percent were Democrats, 37 percent were Republicans, and 26 percent independents. I would be very surprised if the voter universe this November had a plurality of no-party voters.

Both Grassley and Branstad led comfortably among no-party voters in the new KCCI poll, so if that poll over-sampled independents, the Republican leads in the Senate and governor's race might be even smaller than they appear. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that this November's voter universe will contain more Democrats than Republicans, as this poll assumes. Iowa Democrats still have a voter registration advantage of about 100,000 over the GOP, but Republicans may benefit from an "enthusiasm gap."

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by: desmoinesdem @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 12:32:00 PM UTC

Fair enough, but voter registration still shows independents a plularity......

Independents have been a plularity in Iowa for my entire adult life (I'm 42) I believe, and sometimes by a substantial margin, although always in the mid-to-high-30s as a share of the electorate.

And exit polls are flat out wrong sometimes, which doesn't get mentioned enough.  There have been a few instances where exit polls have been definitively proven wrong, and
other cases where they've been demonstrably established as virtually wrong based on nonsensical statistic anomalies.  Usually these evidence-based indications of error have to do with racial turnout in Southern states, but such errors establish that polling itself is imperfect and not always can be trusted.

That in mind, is there a reason to think independents really would have stayed at home in larger numbers than partisans in 2006, so that they made up just 26% of the electorate?  That doesn't make sense to me intuitively when you consider the ballot had a very competitive open-seat Governorship, a competitive open Congressional seat, and enough voter interest to knock out a well-liked incumbent Republican in another Congressional seat, not to mention everything downballot.  This is enough to typically keep voter participation up there, and keep independents interested.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 17:19:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

yes, no-party voters are a plurality

but in off-year elections turnout among independents drops more sharply than turnout among partisans.

I would be very surprised if no-party voters make up almost 40 percent of the voters this November.

Today Secretary of State Mike Mauro announced the latest voter registration numbers: 602,768 Republicans, 711,106 Democrats, and 774,005 no-party voters.

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by: desmoinesdem @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 18:31:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

that 2006 number doesn't come from an exit poll

It comes from the Secretary of State's office. Go here and click on "Statewide Statistical Report" for the 2006 general election results (it will be a pdf file). The Secretary of State's office has records on exactly how many people voted. In the 2006 general election, 384,983 registered Democrats voted, 386,382 registered Republicans voted, and 273,094 independents voted. The turnout rate for Iowa independents was about 35.6 percent in 2006, far below the turnout rate for Dems (62.2 percent) and Repubs (64.9 percent).

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by: desmoinesdem @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 18:36:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Wow, thanks, I never would've guessed that! (nm)

nm

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Fri May 07, 2010 at 22:52:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Iowa Dems need to hope

that our GOTV of unreliable Democratic voters is effective, and independents don't get much more active in 2010 than they were in 2006.  

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by: desmoinesdem @ Sat May 08, 2010 at 02:24:11 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Don't question GOTV strength and import, but 2004 taught us that...

...persuasion is more important.

The Democratic advantage in banked votes in 2004 was as large as one could imagine, and yet Dubya won the state with a more-than-offsetting massive margin in election day voting.

But yeah, this being a midterm, GOTV strength takes on relatively more importance than in a tightly-contested Presidential election when voters are self-motivated.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Sat May 08, 2010 at 12:25:13 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

true

and right now Culver and Conlin trail badly among independents. They are going to need to work on that.

The Iowa Democratic Party GOTV in 2004 wasn't as smart. Precinct captains like myself wasted a lot of time contacting reliable D voters, urging them to vote absentee. It was counter-productive, because a lot of those people just like voting on election day, and the votes we did bank came primarily from people who would have voted anyway.

In 2006 the early voting effort was much more focused on unreliable Iowa D voters--not people who hadn't missed an election in 20 years, but people who tended to vote in presidential years and NOT in off-years. That meant that more of the banked votes in 2006 were from Democrats who couldn't be counted on to turn out on election day.

In 2004 Iowa Democrats exceeded their vote goal for Kerry by about 35,000, but turnout for Bush was higher than Dems had anticipated. One unusual factor that helped Bush was an anti-gambling referendum in three Republican-leaning counties west and southwest of Des Moines. The Christian right was working extremely hard to defeat a new casino, and they succeeded. I'd bet that 90 percent of the people turned out by that effort voted for Bush.

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by: desmoinesdem @ Sat May 08, 2010 at 23:17:50 PM UTC

[ Parent ]