‘PSYOP’ POLLS AND THE IOWA CAUCUSES. Des Moines — The political press corps gets very excited about the Des Moines Register poll. Some journalists refer to it as the “gold standard” of Iowa polls, even though it has had its troubles in recent years. The final edition of the poll sets powerful expectations for what is going to happen on caucus night.
That final edition was released Saturday evening, 48 hours before the Republican presidential caucuses. In it, Donald Trump leads the field with 48 percent of those surveyed — down just a little bit since the last Register poll in early December. In that earlier poll, Ron DeSantis was in second place with 19 percent, but he has now fallen to third place with 16 percent. Second place has been taken over by Nikki Haley, who moved from 16 percent in December to 20 percent now.
So the short version is: Trump still way ahead, Haley up to second, DeSantis down to third. Despite the change of a few points in second place, what’s striking is how stable the race has been for month after month. The Register has done four caucus polls — August, October, December, and now. Trump’s measurement in those four polls has been 42-43-51-48. DeSantis’s measure in the four polls has been 19-16-19-16. Only Haley has shown notable growth, going 6-16-16-20, but as the new second place candidate, her support is still less than half of Trump’s.
In recent days, Trump, who loves polls that show him leading, has shown signs of being slightly nervous about his enormous margin. (In the RealClearPolitics average of all Iowa polls, he is now 33.8 points ahead of Haley.) The nervousness is not about winning — no one thinks Trump could actually lose with such a huge lead — but about failing to meet the expectations that lead creates. What if he wins, but by only, say, 18 points? That would be a record — the biggest margin of victory in any contested Iowa GOP caucus ever is 12 points. But would it be a disappointment? Would the talking heads start declaring Trump the real loser, even as he won big? Lately the Trump team has been saying a record victory — that is, by more than 12 points — would be a very big deal.
The poll is obviously most troubling for DeSantis. Once in solid second place in the race, he has bounced around in a narrow range of 16 to 19 percent and is now in third place. DeSantis spent Saturday driving through what were still blizzard conditions across Iowa. In the afternoon he went to the West Des Moines headquarters of his Super PAC, Never Back Down. He had his usual crew of supporters with him — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, Rep. Chip Roy, and podcast host Steve Deace.
In a warmup speech, Deace told the crowd about the Ted Cruz campaign that won the Iowa caucuses, beating Donald Trump in 2016. The DeSantis campaign, he said, is better than that. “This is the time to make a serious statement to the rest of the country,” Deace continued. “Your psyop polls aren’t going to determine who the next leader is.”
When DeSantis took the stage, he jazzed the crowd by vowing that no blizzard, no wind chill, and no media narrative could stop his campaign. “They can throw fake polls at us and we are going to fight,” DeSantis said. “We are going to fight because we are going to turn this country around.”
In conversations with Deace and Roy, I mentioned that the idea of “psyops” polls, that is, polls that can’t be trusted, certainly isn’t new. Back in 2012, I talked to many supporters of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign who vowed to “unskew” polls they said were slanted against Romney and in favor of President Barack Obama. There was a lot of talk, especially in conservative media, about “unskewing the polls.” Of course, the polls were basically right and Romney lost. Deace and Roy both said that the current Iowa polls simply do not reflect the reality they are seeing on the ground as they campaign for DeSantis — they say there is an enthusiasm and determination among DeSantis’s supporters that the polls are not picking up.
You never know. That could be true. Indeed, one striking thing about the new Des Moines Register poll is that the pollster who conducted it, Ann Selzer, seemed to cast doubt on the predictive value of the results specifically for Nikki Haley. Despite Haley’s rise in the polls, Selzer suggested Haley’s supporters aren’t terribly enthusiastic — some are downright unenthusiastic — and might not show up at caucuses on Monday. “The deep data on (Haley) suggest she looks stronger in the poll than she could on caucus night,” Selzer said in the Register’s article on the poll. Yes, Haley has moved into second place, Selzer said, but “most of the rest of the data here is not good news.”
Haley’s worst results came when pollsters asked, “How would you describe your level of enthusiasm for your first-choice candidate? They were given a choice of “extremely enthusiastic,” “very enthusiastic,” “mildly enthusiastic,” or “not that enthusiastic.” For Trump, 88 percent said they were extremely or very enthusiastic, while only 11 percent said they were mildly enthusiastic and nobody said they were not that enthusiastic. For DeSantis, 62 percent said they were extremely or very enthusiastic, while 38 percent said they were mildly or not that enthusiastic. For Haley, just 39 percent said they were extremely or very enthusiastic, while a huge number — 61 percent — said they were mildly or not that enthusiastic.
“Her enthusiasm numbers, again, I just think are on the edge of jaw-dropping,” Selzer told the Register. “That 61 percent are just mildly enthusiastic or not that enthusiastic — it just seems at odds with a candidate moving up.” So with the most-watched poll of the Iowa caucuses showing Haley’s move into second place on the eve of voting — on that important moment, the pollster virtually comes out and says to take the result with a grain of salt.
Haley, of course, won’t be talking about that. Lately she has used the polls to needle DeSantis — “You’ve gone down in the polls in Iowa” she told him during Wednesday’s debates — and argues the polls prove she could do better against President Joe Biden than any other Republican candidate. Haley, so far at least, likes the polls.
So now the final survey is in, and it says…what? Well, one candidate (Trump) is wary, while another candidate (DeSantis) is in denial, and another candidate (Haley) is happy. Make of it what you will.
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