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Is Trump Leaving an Opening in Iowa?

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Is Trump Leaving an Opening in Iowa?


Donald J. Trump has dominated the Republican Party for eight years, and our recent poll results show that he is dominating the Republican primary race again. So it’s not wrong to wonder whether Mr. Trump is simply undefeatable — even after his third criminal indictment.

But there was one moment — one fleeting moment — when it really did look like Republicans might move on. It was in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm election, when Mr. Trump’s party and his preferred candidates fared far worse than expected. It undermined the perception of his strength and dominance. He was a loser.

With that in mind, consider our first New York Times/Siena College survey of the Iowa caucus, released Friday. It is by no means a bad survey for Mr. Trump: He leads Ron DeSantis by a comfortable margin, 43 percent to 20 percent. Tim Scott sits even further back, at 9 percent.

But Mr. Trump’s position is unequivocally weaker in our Iowa poll than in our nationwide survey. His support is well beneath 50 percent in Iowa, and his opponents seem stronger. Mr. DeSantis has the highest favorability ratings in the poll, and clear majorities of likely caucusgoers consider him more “likable” and “moral” than the former president. Mr. Trump’s electability advantage over Mr. DeSantis is also far smaller — just 9 points — than it is nationwide.

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A 23-point deficit is still a daunting gap for Mr. DeSantis. But unlike the national poll, our Iowa poll has revealed a few cracks in Mr. Trump’s armor. If Mr. DeSantis (or another challenger) could ever pry those cracks open and win the Iowa caucuses — the first nominating contest of the race — one wonders what kind of effect that might have on Republican voters.

After all, the only time Republicans were prepared to move on from Mr. Trump was the one time he and his supporters had to accept that he lost, after the 2022 midterm election.

  • Will Hurd, the former Texas congressman, narrowly missed the qualifying threshold for the first G.O.P. debate on Aug. 23 in our national poll earlier this week. He had the support of 0.57 percent of Republican primary voters, near the 1 percent needed to help him qualify for the event (Mr. Hurd has not yet qualified for the debate; The Times is tracking who has qualified, here).Usually, 0.57 percent would be rounded to 1 percent, but while the poll was being conducted we decided that wasn’t appropriate for this survey. Republicans had set a 1 percent threshold to winnow the debate field; rounding to the nearest whole number didn’t seem like it was in the spirit of the cutoff for candidates in this case.

  • Vivek Ramaswamy also had cause to be disappointed in our polls. He received 2 percent of the vote in our national survey, compared with about 6 percent in the FiveThirtyEight polling average and over 10 percent in some online polls. I’ll offer two basic theories for why he did worse in our poll.

    One is that it’s about survey administration: In an online survey, you see a long list of candidates, read them over, and then you choose one. In our phone survey, you either immediately volunteered your preference after hearing the question, or you heard a list of more than a dozen candidates and chose an answer at the end. If you’re an undecided voter, the online setting might help you find and choose someone you’re not especially familiar with. You may be overwhelmed on the phone, and even if you liked Mr. Ramaswamy when he was mentioned 20 seconds earlier, you could forget by the time the interviewer is done asking the question.

    A second possibility is that it’s about the kind of voters who participate in the big online panels that power so many polls today. Maybe they’re, shall we say, a little too online — and perhaps unusually likely to be aware of Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign. My guess is that this is probably a factor: Online polls recruited by mail and by YouGov, the gold standard of this kind of polling, don’t show Mr. Ramaswamy doing so well, even though they were also conducted online.

  • This Times/Siena national poll used an elaborate model of the likely Republican primary electorate, but it’s hard to say it made any difference in the result. Mr. Trump would have held a commanding lead with at least 50 percent of the vote no matter how we defined G.O.P. primary voters.

  • The Democratic primary, however, is a case where more sophisticated modeling of the primary electorate might make a huge difference. While President Biden leads Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by a wide margin, 64 percent to 13 percent, among Democratic leaners, he enjoys a far wider lead — 74 percent to 8 percent — among those Democratic leaners who have ever actually voted in a primary, including 92 percent to 4 percent among those who voted in a Democratic primary in 2022.

    My guess: if we had done an elaborate Democratic primary poll — and we did not, in the absence of a competitive race — Mr. Biden’s lead would have grown.

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  • As I mentioned a few days ago, we’ve started to mull whether and how we can use respondents who begin to take our polls but don’t complete the interview. In our longer national surveys, about 15 percent of our respondents fall into this category, and they’re the kind of less educated and less reliable voters whom we want included in our polls.

    Interestingly enough, including these voters might have made a slight difference in our national poll this week. Rather than being tied, Mr. Trump would have led Mr. Biden by one point, 43 percent to 42 percent, if the survey had included respondents who decided to stop taking the survey before it was completed.

    It’s not clear whether this is just a random blip or indicative of a systematic tendency for these drop-off voters to back Republican candidates. Until now, we haven’t had the data necessary to fully evaluate this issue. In particular, we haven’t had the self-reported educational attainment of these respondents. But it’s something we’ve begun to track and may ultimately incorporate into our design.



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Rosemount H.S. Marching Band wins at Iowa competition

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Rosemount H.S. Marching Band wins at Iowa competition


The Rosemount High School Marching Band is celebrating a big victory from a competition earlier this fall. In late September they took home the Class AAA Championship trophy at the Bands of America regional competition in Waukee, Iowa. Members of the band joined the FOX 9 Morning News to talk about the win and share how they are getting ready for another big competition this weekend at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.



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Iowa high school football scores for Week 7

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Iowa high school football scores for Week 7


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(This story was updated to add new information)

It’s Week 7 of the Iowa high school football season. Check out our list of IHSAA scores from Friday night’s action.

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Stream Iowa HS football on the NFHS Network

Scores are listed in alphabetical order by winning team

IHSAA scores from Week 7 of Iowa high school football season

Friday’s games:

  • Ankeny Centennial 45, Des Moines Roosevelt 3
  • Bedford 77, Lamoni 0
  • Benton 38, Grinnell 7
  • Bettendorf 48, Davenport Central 0
  • Cedar Falls 38, Dubuque Senior 0
  • Cedar Rapids Kennedy 45, Dubuque Hempstead 14
  • Cedar Rapids Prairie 56, Cedar Rapids Jefferson 7
  • Cedar Rapids Xavier 35, Oskaloosa 0
  • Central City 64, Lone Tree 8
  • Central Lyon/George-Little Rock 23, Western Christian 7
  • Clarinda 47, Chariton 7
  • Columbus 48, Van Buren County 7
  • Creston 70, Knoxville 0
  • Crestwood 28, New Hampton 27
  • Davenport Assumption 34, Washington 6
  • Decorah 57, Marion 14
  • Dike-New Hartford 42, Aplington-Parkersburg 0
  • Don Bosco 62, Turkey Valley 0
  • Dowling Catholic 49, Urbandale 28
  • Dyersville Beckman 28, Iowa City Regina 15
  • East Mills 50, Exira-EHK 44
  • East Union 64, Murray 36
  • Easton Valley 61, Midland 21
  • Edgewood-Colesburg 84, Calamus-Wheatland 31
  • Emmetsburg 64, Eagle Grove 0
  • Fremont-Mills 40, CAM 28
  • Fort Dodge 55, Storm Lake 26
  • Fort Dodge St. Edmond 43, Colo-Nesco 6
  • Glenwood 20, Dallas Center-Grimes 17
  • Glidden-Ralston 48, Coon Rapids-Bayard 6
  • GMG 52, Meskwaki Settlement 0
  • Greene County 10, Southeast Valley 7
  • Harlan 24, Nevada 21
  • Highland 41, Louisa-Muscatine 6
  • Hinton 19, OABCIG 13
  • Humboldt 21, Algona 20
  • IKM-Manning 13, Southwest Valley 6
  • Iowa City Liberty 28, Ankeny 20
  • Jesup 35, Iowa Falls-Alden 6
  • Johnston 56, Council Bluffs Lincoln 7
  • Lenox 55, Southeast Warren 8
  • Lewis Central 28, Winterset 24
  • Linn-Mar 55, Davenport West 6
  • Logan-Magnolia 14, Council Bluffs St. Albert 10
  • Maquoketa Valley 35, North Linn 16
  • Marshalltown 26, Ames 21
  • Mediapolis 49, Davis County 20
  • MMCRU 41, Westwood 18
  • MOC-Floyd Valley 35, Sioux Center 14
  • Mount Vernon 56, Fort Madison 7
  • North Butler 22, Nashua-Plainfield 0
  • North Fayette Valley won by forfeit over Oelwein
  • North Iowa 46, Harris-Lake Park 40
  • North Polk 22, Indianola 21
  • Okoboji 49, Clarion-Goldfield-Dows 21
  • Osage 42, Waukon 6
  • Pekin 57, Wapello 0
  • Pleasant Valley 42, Muscatine 7
  • Remsen St. Mary’s 46, Woodbine 30
  • Riceville 57, Waterloo Christian 0
  • Ridge View 22, West Sioux 7
  • Riverside 41, Earlham 6
  • Roland-Story 28, Des Moines Christian 21
  • Saint Ansgar 53, West Fork 0
  • Sergeant Bluff-Luton 21, Carroll 0
  • Sibley-Ocheyedan 48, HMS 14
  • Sidney 62, Stanton-Essex 20
  • Sigourney-Keota 62, Colfax-Mingo 26
  • South Central Calhoun 41, Panorama 12
  • South Hardin 34, Hudson 21
  • Southeast Polk 31, Waukee 28
  • Spencer 41, Sioux City West 0
  • Spirit Lake 49, Garner-Hayfield-Ventura 6
  • Sumner-Fredericksburg 54, Central Springs 12
  • Treynor 36, Shenandoah 6
  • Tri-Center 34, Woodbury Central 8
  • Underwood 41, Missouri Valley 6
  • Van Meter 54, Centerville 0
  • Wapsie Valley 46, BCLUW 0
  • Wayne 30, Central Decatur 6
  • Webster City 42, Charles City 21
  • West Hancock 60, Lake Mills 6
  • West Lyon 50, Sheldon 0
  • Wilton 39, West Branch 20
  • Winfield-Mt. Union 68, Mormon Trail 8

Thursday’s games:

  • Le Mars 44, Fort Dodge 37
  • Pella 42, D.M. Hoover 10
  • S.C North 37, D.M. East 0



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Kirk Ferentz’s Reputation On The Line In Iowa vs Washington

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Kirk Ferentz’s Reputation On The Line In Iowa vs Washington


The Iowa Hawkeyes are coming off of a 35-7 thumping at the hands of the Ohio State Buckeyes, and while a loss to Ohio State was expected, it was how Iowa lost that has Hawkeyes fans livid.

Iowa’s offense was absolutely lifeless, Cade McNamara looked lost and head coach Kirk Ferentz did not seem to have any answers.

Not only that, but Ferentz doubled down on McNamara remaining the starter after the game, saying that the quarterback actually showed improvement.

That’s why Ferentz’s reputation may actually be on the line when the Hawkeyes face the Washington Huskies this Saturday.

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Iowa is just 3-2 on the season, as it also lost to the Iowa State Cyclones back in Week 2. A loss to Washington would drop the Hawkeyes to .500, and it would add more fuel to the “fire Ferentz” discussion that has been smoldering.

The Huskies are a new addition to the Big Ten and just beat the Michigan Wolverines, and while Michigan has not been as good as expected, Washington is no joke.

However, make no mistake: Iowa needs to beat these guys.

Here is the thing: barring a catastrophic remainder of the 2024 campaign at Iowa City, the Hawkeyes aren’t canning Ferentz. The man is under contract through 2029 on a hefty salary. It isn’t happening.

But Ferentz’s reputation is a different story.

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The 69-year-old has been at the helm for Iowa since 1999 and is highly respected by the fans, but patience is running thin.

Last year, the Hawkeyes played three ranked opponents and lost by a total score of 92-0. They also just got destroyed by Ohio State. The Iowa fan base is tired with being second-best, and at this point, that is all Ferentz has offered them.

Sure, Iowa does not have the cachet or prestige of schools like Ohio State, Michigan or Alabama. It typically won’t land the very best recruits as a result. But the Hawkeyes’ inability to even put together respectable offenses over the years does reflect poorly on Ferentz, who is the longest-tenured coach in the country.

And Iowa fans are sick of it.

The Hawkeyes absolutely need to beat the Huskies this Saturday. Iowa should be better than Washington, and at some point, the Hawkeyes are going to have to display that they can consistently beat good teams.

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Is all of the Ferentz criticism deserved? No, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of it is completely unfounded.

Ferentz can provide some nice pushback to all of the naysayers with a Week 7 win over Washington. Or, he can give fans more reason to complain with a loss.



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