Saturday, August 29, 2015

Trump tops Iowa poll by Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics with 23%. Favorability rating rises to 61%, poll dates Aug. 23-26, 2015 (Sun-Wed), likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers

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Poll dates Aug. 23-26, 2015. Trump 23, Carson 18, Cruz 8, Walker 8, Bush 6, Rubio 6

8/29/15, "Iowa Poll: Trump blazes to lead; Carson quietly rises," Des Moines Register, Jennifer Jacobs

"A new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll finds that Trump, the flamboyant real estate entrepreneur, has 23 percent support here. But Ben Carson, a soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon, has been a submarine, quietly cruising into second with 18 percent, just 5 percentage points from the front-runner....

All the other candidates are grinding away in the single digits, in this order: Ted Cruz and Scott Walker (both 8 percent), Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio (both 6 percent), Carly Fiorina (5 percent), and Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul (both 4 percent).

"Wow," said Kedron Bardwell, a political science professor at Simpson College. "This poll will have Republican consultants shaking heads in bewilderment. Not since 1992 has anti-establishment sentiment been this strong."

Bringing up the rear are Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal and John Kasich (all with 2 percent); Rick Perry and Rick Santorum (both 1 percent); and Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki (all with less than 1 percent)....

Candidates who are political outsiders don't seem to be just a summer fling, as some analysts had predicted, but a budding long-term relationship five months out from the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses....

They're not just mad at Democrats: Three-fourths are frustrated with Republicans in Congress, with 54 percent unsatisfied and 21 percent mad as hell.

Electing a nonpolitician is "becoming more important as I realize that the Republicans in Washington are no different than the Democrats," said retired engineer Craig Wiegel, 63, of Bettendorf, who participated in the Iowa Poll in May. "They tell you one thing until they're voted in, and then just go along with the Democrats."...

The Iowa Poll of 400 likely Republican caucusgoers was conducted Aug. 23-26 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points....

Carson beats Trump with Christian conservatives (23 percent to 16 percent) and also with women (20 percent to 16 percent).

Melanie Hobbs, 45, of Sioux City, a stay-at-home mother who home-schools her seven kids, names Carson as her first choice because he's "totally against abortion, and that's one of our biggest issues."

Hobbs also thinks Carson aligns with her thinking on immigration.

"We need to build a fence. We need to stop the influx of illegals," she said....

Trump now viewed favorably by most

In the last Iowa Poll, in May, Trump had the highest unfavorable rating of all the Republicans, back when he was tied for ninth place with 4 percent. Trump has almost completely reversed his rating. Then, 27 percent had positive feelings about him and 63 percent negative. Now, it's 61 percent positive, 35 percent negative.

"People asked if he could right the ship of his upside-down favorable scores. The answer is: Yes, hell yes," said J. Ann Selzer, the pollster for the Register/Bloomberg Iowa Poll.

Poll respondents might not know many specifics about Trump's positions, but they don't really care. The majority of likely Republican caucusgoers say they're willing to put trust in their top candidate to figure out the issues once in office (57 percent).

Among Trump supporters, the feeling is even more widespread (65 percent).

Like Democrats in 2007 who looked for their savior in Barack Obama, Republicans in 2015 seem to be looking for their savior in Trump.

Scott Walker, governor of neighboring Wisconsin, led in two Iowa Polls earlier this year, in January and May. In July, Trump came to Iowa to ask Republicans to toss Walker off the first-place perch, and they complied. "He's got that Type A personality to go out and get what he wants and not back down," said Trump supporter Garrison Reekers, 43, a deputy sheriff from Belle Plaine who considers himself a business-oriented establishment Republican. "There's too much money in politics, and Trump can afford to take care of himself, and then he doesn't have to put on somebody else's agenda."

Large swaths of likely caucusgoers from both parties share Reekers' frustration with the amount of money in politics. Forty percent of Republicans are mad as hell about it, and 61 percent of Democrats, their highest number in that category.

Respondents keeping their options open

The poll is bad news for Walker, who is collapsing in his firewall state, shedding half the support he had in May.

 "I don't think he's dynamic enough at this point," said Christian conservative respondent Julie Roe, 47, of Eldora, who works in ag marketing.

Roe likes Huckabee and Cruz, and says she would never caucus for Bush, because "all he wants to do is make government bigger" and he has "no concept of how the real world lives" because he "has never lived anything close to a middle class life."

She also said she detests political dynasties.

Bush continues to struggle in Iowa. Only 45 percent of likely caucusgoers have favorable feelings about him; 50 percent view him negatively. Bush has yet to spend a dime on TV advertising here, but his super PAC launches ads in September, hoping to use its financial advantage to tell the story of Bush's conservative record to a larger audience.

Politics watchers also might be surprised to see Huckabee and Fiorina so far back. He's a previous winner of the Iowa caucuses, in 2008, and she's hot on the national scene after a widely praised national debate performance a month ago....

Ten percent of likely GOP caucusgoers are uncommitted or not sure of their first choice. Every voter quoted in this article is keeping an open mind, expressing willingness to swap to a different first-choice candidate....

Poll respondent Barbara Olson, 63, of Burlington says Trump is now her first choice because of what he has said about stopping illegal immigration and repealing Obamacare, and because he's "a very good, savvy businessman.""...
  
"About the poll"

"The Iowa Poll, conducted August 23-26 for The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 400 registered Iowa voters who say they definitely or probably will attend the 2016 Republican caucuses and 404 registered voters who say they definitely or probably will attend the 2016 Democratic caucuses.

Interviewers with Quantel Research contacted 2,975 randomly selected active voters from the Iowa secretary of state's voter registration list by telephone. Responses were adjusted by age, sex and congressional district to reflect all active voters in the voter registration list. Interviews were administered in English.

Questions based on the subsamples of 404 likely Democratic caucus attendees or 400 likely Republican caucus attendees each have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 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 4.9 percentage points. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error."

https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://www.gannett-cdn.com/LDSN/desmoines/PDF/iowa-poll-study-2125-methodology-aug31-update.pdf



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