4 weeks until Election Day, State Navigate finds that polling may be missing rural Iowa Republicans
Last week, State Navigate conducted its first-ever poll in Iowa in State Senate District 35. This eastern Iowa district contains the towns/cities of Clinton, Camanche, DeWitt, and Maquoketa, as well as rural parts of Clinton, Scott, and Jackson counties, and flipped to Democrats in a January 28th, 2025, special election. Democrat incumbent Mike Zimmer is running for re-election against Republican Joe Stutting in this Trump +21 district.
Our live poll showed Zimmer leading by 4.6%; our final result, using our standard weighting process, found a similar 3-point lead for Zimmer. However, we noticed two problems in our survey: 1. There are more likely Trump voters who are lying about their 2024 vote for the President than anywhere else we’ve polled, and 2. Even accounting for this, rural Republicans in Iowa are difficult to reach. As a result, our team is releasing two versions of this survey: one with our standard weighting process that doesn’t rely on a 2024 recall vote, and one that does.
In the version of our survey that includes weighting on the 2024 presidential recall, we find Zimmer up with a 2-point lead; so regardless of how you weight a survey in this district, you’re looking at a pure Toss-Up. That still bodes well for Democrats given the Republican lean of this district, but a 5-point difference shows how weighting decisions can change the outcome. Our experience polling this competitive race raises concerns similar to Echelon Insight’s Patrick Ruffini’s: Republicans, particularly rural Republicans in Iowa, are very unresponsive to surveys, at least for now.
As the saying goes, the only poll that matters is on Election Day, so we’ll see which poll mode proves more accurate. If our standard weighting process is right and rural areas in Iowa are swinging sharply left, then statewide polling should hold up well. If the recalled-vote version of our poll proves more accurate, that would indicate Iowa’s statewide races are closer than polling expects. As of this writing, Rob Sand leads polling by 9 points in the race for Governor, and Josh Turek leads the race for US Senate by 1 point.
You can check the full results for each poll below.