20/20 Polls Iowa

Last week, 20/20 Insight polled Iowans for Justice Not Politics and Justice at Stake.  You can read the releases from the two organizations at the link above.  The two groups oppose a movement by some members of the Iowa legislature to impeach four Iowa Supreme Court justices for their involvement with a ruling that legalized same sex marriage in the state in 2009.

Key findings from the 748 Iowa registered voters polled from January 8-12, 2011: Only 36% of Iowans support impeachment, and when read the Constitutional standard for impeachment, only 17% agree that a single ruling they disagree with rises to that standard.  63% say that a ruling they disagree with does not rise to the standard.

We also asked Iowa voters about a theoretical head-to-head between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for President.  We found Obama with a slight lead (41-37) with voters who are certain who they would support, and when leaners are included Obama and Romney are tied at 44.

Additionally, we asked Iowa voters if there was a chance they might participate in the Republican caucuses.  35% of voters say there is a chance, and among those that might caucus, "Not Certain" is the leader with 27%, followed closely by Mike Huckabee at 23% and Sarah Palin at 17.  Mitt Romney (12), Tim Pawlenty (10) and Newt Gingrich (7) are in the hunt, and further back we found Mitch Daniels with 2% and Haley Barbour with less than 1%.  We identified all of these candidates in the question by their title, which may explain why next-door neighbor Tim Pawlenty sees his support grow in comparison with recent polling that did not identify him as a former Minnesota Governor.

For full results, including crosstabs and a statement of methodology, please download the following files:
Frequencies and Statement of Methodology (PDF)
Full Crosstabs for Respondent Groups (PDF)

Statement of Methodology for this poll:
20/20 Insight, LLC surveyed 748 Iowa voters from January 8-12, 2011. Thesurvey's margin of error is +/- 3.6% at a confidence level of 95%. Questions Q60, Q70 and Q160 were only asked of registered voters screened on prior questions and have higher MOE, which are noted in the results.  20/20 Insight, LLC conducts surveys using automated interactive voice response (IVR) technology. This is what is often referred to in the media as a “robo poll”.

No live human operators spoke to respondents, who used their touch-tone phones to answer questions. Every respondent heard the exact same prompt for each question, except where noted a computer randomized the order in which they heard questions, ballot choices or names. Respondents had up to 10
seconds to answer each question – at that point (or if an invalid answer was offered) the question was re-read in its entirety. On average for this survey, respondents spent 9 minutes 58 seconds on the phone, and slightly more than 16% of those called who initially agreed to take the survey did not complete it.

The frequencies reported in this survey include the weighted results from ONLY the 748 respondents who answered every question through Q210.

Additional demographic weighting was applied to the survey using the 2008 Exit Poll for the Iowa General Election available on www.cnn.com. 85% of poll respondents had a final weight less than or equal to 1.5. A weighting of 1 would mean no weighting was applied. This weighting, and other factors such as refusal to be interviewed may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify. 20/20 Insight, LLC employed multiple callbacks over successive days and at different hours during the day and also attempted to convert those who initially decline to participate in order to reduce any respondent bias introduced by only interviewing the subset of the general population that answers a call on any random night.