Jason Noble

jnoble2@dmreg.com

© COPYRIGHT 2016, DES MOINES REGISTER AND TRIBUNE COMPANY

Donald Trump has surged to a 7-point lead over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton among Iowa voters, firmly establishing the Republican presidential nominee as the favorite to win the state’s six electoral votes on Tuesday.

Trump is the top choice for 46 percent of Iowans who have already cast a ballot or plan to do so on Election Day, according to the latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, compared to 39 percent who say they’re for Clinton.

That makes the state Trump’s to lose, political analyst Amy Walter said.

“The bigger surprise on election night would be if he lost Iowa, not that he won it,” said Walter, national editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

To Walter, the numbers suggest Iowa Republican leaders' support of Trump is helping sway Republicans and independent voters, who are undeterred by questions about his character and temperament. Such factors are critical, she said, because Trump’s path to the White House likely depends on an Iowa victory.

“Donald Trump can’t afford to lose Iowa, and Hillary Clinton can,” she said. “There are multiple paths for Hillary Clinton to get to 270 electoral votes, and many of us who are watching the map have expected that Iowa may not be part of that calculus for her.”

Trump leads among several key demographic groups, including men, self-identified independents, young and middle-aged voters and those without a college degree.

Forty-one percent of independents support Trump, compared to 34 percent who back Clinton. Trump likewise leads by 5 percentage points — 43 to 38 — among voters under 35.

Poll respondent Shawna Brown, a 35-year-old waitress from Peru, Ia., said she’s backing Trump because of his business experience and her gut-level distrust for Clinton.

“He’s a businessman, and I think he understands how the country should be ran better than Hillary,” said Brown, an independent voter. “I don’t trust her. There’s something about her; I just feel like she truly is lying.”

At first glance, the early vote offers a bright spot for Clinton, where she enjoys a 22-point advantage over Trump. That’s a testament to her campaign’s heavy focus on banking votes during Iowa’s 40-day early vote period. But the data indicate it will not be enough to overcome Trump's support.

Voters who have already cast their ballots represent 34 percent of poll respondents. Among the remaining two-thirds of respondents who haven’t voted but plan to, Trump leads by 21 percentage points, 53-32.

Among other groups, meanwhile, Clinton’s lead is significantly lower than the advantage she enjoys nationally. She holds just a 3-point lead among women, for example, a demographic Democrats have been banking on to reject Trump and lift Clinton and one that she leads by a dozen or more points in national polls.

The poll of 800 Iowa likely voters was conducted by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines on Nov. 1-4 and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Younger Iowans tuning out?

Trump’s overall 46-39 advantage underscores gains he has made since the last Iowa Poll, conducted four weeks ago, in which he led by 4 points. Clinton’s share of support remains stagnant at 39 percent across the two polls, while Trump’s has risen 3 percentage points.

In keeping with a demographic divide evident across the country, Trump is dominating among voters without a college degree, winning 49 percent of their vote compared to 36 percent for Clinton. Clinton, in turn, holds a much narrower 3-point lead among the substantially smaller slice of the electorate with a college degree.

The poll shows younger voters are less likely to identify as Democrats, something that stands in contrast to the last two elections. The youth vote was the backbone of the Obama coalition in Iowa, and he won by a large margin among voters under age 35 in 2008. The final Iowa poll ahead of the 2008 election showed 33 percent of those under age 35 identified as Democrats, 26 percent as Republicans, and 38 percent as independents. In this poll, 36 percent identify as independent, 32 percent Republican and just 25 percent Democratic.

Iowa Poll pollster Ann Selzer sees in these results evidence that young liberals who backed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses may be skipping the general election out of distaste for their final options.

“I just have to wonder if the Bernie lovers are sitting this one out,” Selzer said.

Voters upset by their options

Regardless of who they’re voting for, there’s a wide consensus among Iowa voters that their options for president this year are less than desirable.

Forty percent of respondents say they’re “dissatisfied" with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the major-party nominees for president — and another 28 percent call them the “worst choices I’ve faced as a voter.”

Just 20 percent, by contrast, say they’re satisfied with their options, and 5 percent call them the best choices they’ve ever faced.

Lymon Miller, a retired school teacher from Eldridge, was among the "worst choices" group.

Asked by a reporter if he’s supporting Clinton, the independent voter said, “No, I’m voting for her. Big difference.”

For him, the bar for who should become president has fallen so low that the defining factor has become whether a candidate undermines democracy itself. And he believes that’s exactly what Trump did when he began talking about rigged elections and possibly not accepting the results should he lose.

“It chips away at who we are as a country,” Miller said. “He’s a threat to our way — or at least my way — of thinking about who we are.”

Miller said he thinks Clinton often lies or bends the truth. But he believes she at least has the experience to understand how things work in Washington.

But his outlook for the future is bleak, regardless of Tuesday’s result.

“The fear we have is, or the fear most people have, is that this is going to be unending,” he said. “The government is not going to do anything for the country. They’re going to try to unseat or stop whoever’s elected from doing anything for the country. They’re just going to try to work on the next election. The next election starts the day this one is over.”

MORE FROM IOWA POLL:

The last month or so of the race has not improved voters’ perceptions of either candidate, although Iowans’ confidence in Clinton’s likely success as a president has fallen harder than their confidence in Trump’s.

Fifty-five percent of respondents say they’ve become less confident that Clinton would be a successful president if elected, against 28 percent who say they’re more confident. Forty-six percent have less confidence in Trump’s likely success, compared to 39 percent who say they’re more confident.

Mike Grubb, an audio engineer and independent voter from Norwalk, called Trump a “clown” and Clinton a “criminal.” He’s voting for Trump, he said, only because he considers voting a civic duty regardless of the quality of the candidates.

“There’s no substantial candidates this year,” said Grubb, 48. “I think they’ll both fail.”

COMPARE THE CANDIDATES: See issue stances for Clinton, Trump

VIDEOS: Listen to Trump and Clinton speeches in Iowa

Several factors bother voters

The news over the past month hasn’t been great for either candidate. In early October, Trump’s campaign was rocked by the release of a video in which he could be heard bragging about groping women and kissing them without their permission, while Clinton was shocked late last month by the revelation of renewed FBI scrutiny into her email practices as secretary of state.

Fully 75 percent of poll respondents — including 79 percent of independents and 56 percent of Republicans — report being bothered by Trump’s comments on that “Access Hollywood” video. That includes 52 percent of poll respondents who say they’re bothered “a lot” by the tape.

Respondent Lonna Blodgett said she was “appalled” by Trump’s remarks. The 53-year-old full-time student from Brighton is a political independent who said she’s voting for Clinton but also Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

“The things he says go against my beliefs,” Blodgett said of Trump. “He stereotypes and degrades women, minorities — anybody that is not from his wealthy, white, male society.”

Sixty-three percent of Iowans, meanwhile, are bothered by the latest development in Clinton’s email saga, in which the FBI announced plans to review thousands of newly discovered messages. Forty-two percent of respondents overall (and 44 percent of independents) say they’re bothered “a lot” by the news.

Poll respondent Chris Hungerford said he voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and Barack Obama in 2008, but is supporting Trump this year because of the corruption he sees in Washington, D.C., and a sense that Hillary Clinton is part of it.

Hungerford, 47, a political independent, said he was bothered a lot by the renewed scrutiny of Clinton’s emails, although he had already decided to vote for Trump by the time it was announced.

“All that just shows that everything anybody ever suspected about the Clintons was true,” Hungerford said of the ongoing email controversy. “After 30 years of smoke wherever the Clinton have gone, I think we’re now seeing the fire there.”

Also rating as bothersome for Iowa voters: Trump’s suggestion that he might not accept the results of the election unless he wins (61 percent) and Clinton’s relationship with donors to her family foundation while serving as Secretary of State (68 percent).

The political polarization of 2016 and the wide chasm between the Democratic and Republican choices for president do not appear to be spurring a spike in straight-ticket voting. Fifty-three percent of respondents say they’re not voting straight-ticket. Just 18 percent say they’ll vote straight-ticket Democratic and another 18 percent will vote straight-ticket Republican.

Amid a heated and divisive presidential campaign, Iowa voters across the board say they are engaging in more political conversations with people they disagree with.

Fifty-two percent of respondents say they’ve found themselves having more political conversations with people who support a different candidate, compared to 28 percent who report having fewer such conversations — results that are largely uniform among Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Young people, in particular, say they’ve had more conversations with acquaintances who support differing candidates: 63 percent of voters under 35 report having done so.

Reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel contributed to this story.

About the poll

The Iowa Poll, conducted Nov. 1-4 for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 800 Iowans ages 18 or older who say they will definitely vote or have already voted in the 2016 general election.

Interviewers with Quantel Research contacted 1,072 Iowa adults with randomly selected landline and cell phone numbers supplied by Survey Sampling International. Responses from the full probability sample were adjusted by age and sex to reflect the general population based on recent census data. Interviews were administered in English.

Questions based on the subsample of 800 Iowa likely voters have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. This means that if this survey were repeated using the same questions and the same methodology, 19 times out of 20, the findings would not vary from the percentages shown here by more than plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error.

Republishing the copyright Iowa Poll without credit to The Des Moines Register and Mediacom is prohibited.

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