Tag Archive for: Iowa

Ballots in These 8 States Include Citizen-Only Voting Amendments

A measure requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections remains stuck in the Senate, but similar efforts will be  on the ballot this November in eight states.

States set to vote on whether to amend their constitutions to prevent noncitizens from voting are Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

In previous election cycles, such amendments to state constitutions passed overwhelmingly.

The House last month passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, which would require that states obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship from someone before he or she may register to vote. The bill would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the “motor voter law.”

The Democrat-controlled Senate, however, is unlikely to take up the House bill.

In the states, the proposed constitutional amendments in effect would prevent local governments from expanding voting rights to noncitizens, as has occurred in California, Maryland, and Vermont.

“States can take action constitutionally to protect citizen voters,” Kerri Toloczko, executive director of the Election Integrity Network, told The Daily Signal.

“Opponents [of banning noncitizen voting] say it’s already illegal for foreign nationals to vote. It’s also illegal to steal a car,” Toloczko said. “There are so many loopholes in the National Voter Registration Act.”

As noted in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” there have been numerous adjudicated cases of foreign nationals registering to vote and voting in past elections.

1996 federal law specifically prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections for president or members of Congress. However, the law doesn’t dictate what local governments can do.

In addition, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act requires voter registration at states’ motor vehicle departments and social services agencies.

In a case involving an Arizona law, the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that states can’t require proof of citizenship for federal elections, but may do so for state elections. Currently, Arizona keeps separate voter registration lists for state and federal elections.

“It’s not quite the SAVE Act in these states, but it is a marker to overcome bad law at the federal level,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told The Daily Signal, referring to ballot initiatives to amend state constitutions.

“Most state constitutions say that ‘every citizen can vote,’” Snead added. “Activist groups say that doesn’t mean only citizens can vote. So this language clarifies that.”

In 2022, constitutional amendments requiring citizenship to vote were approved by 73% of voters in Louisiana and 77% in Ohio, according to Ballotpedia. In 2020, similar constitutional amendments were approved by 79% of voters in Florida; 77% in Alabama; and 62% in Colorado, a blue state. In 2018, 65% of voters in North Dakota approved such an amendment.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal think tank affiliated with New York University that opposes voter ID and similar reforms, argued in an April analysis that laws targeting noncitizen voting are unnecessary.

“Every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare,” wrote Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights program.

“That includes the Brennan Center’s own study of 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election,” Morales-Doyle added. “We found that election officials in those places, who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes, referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. In other words, even suspected— not proven—noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast.”

Census data shows that 21.7 million potential noncitizens live in the United States as of 2022, while 18 states and the District of Columbia issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, according to the Only Citizens Vote Coalition. Also, every noncitizen who is legally authorized to work in the U.S. is eligible to get a Social Security number.

“With a driver’s license and a Social Security number, any noncitizen can register to vote in any state UNLESS the state takes additional steps to verify U.S. citizenship,” the coalition’s website says.

When advocating passage of the SAVE Act, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., noted that Virginia last year removed about 1,500 registrants from the voter rolls who were noncitizens, and 22% of them had cast ballots.

Massachusetts and Ohio both removed noncitizens from voter rolls in recent years. Georgia found that 1,600 noncitizens attempted to vote. In 2017, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes resigned after the state admitted to registering illegal immigrants for several years.

No state constitutions explicitly allow foreign nationals to vote. By law, the District of Columbia and local jurisdictions in the states of California, Illinois, Maryland, and Vermont allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in local elections, but not in state or federal elections. This approach, however, requires election officials to keep separate lists of registered voters.

Advocates of election integrity argue that keeping separate lists can be difficult, and that noncitizen voters could slip through the cracks for state and federal elections.

New York City’s law allowing noncitizen voting in municipal elections was struck down in February by a federal appeals court.

In California, the cities of Oakland and San Francisco allow voting by noncitizens in local school board elections.

The District of Columbia allowed noncitizens to vote in all local elections, but faced bipartisan opposition as 42 House Democrats joined Republicans in attempting to block the city’s law. But the Senate took no action on the bill. The liberal editorial board of The Washington Post called the D.C. law “radical.”

Chicago has allowed noncitizens to vote in school board elections since 1989.

In Maryland, municipalities allowing foreign nationals to vote in local elections include Barnesville, Cheverly, Chevy Chase, Garrett Park, Glen Echo, Hyattsville, Martin’s Additions, Mount Rainier, Riverdale Park, Somerset, and Takoma Park.

In Vermont, three cities allow foreign nationals to vote:  Burlington, Montpelier, and Winooski.

AUTHOR

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Fred on X:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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Polls: What They’ve Gotten Right So Far, And What They’re Saying About ’24

For almost a decade now, Republicans have taken pollsters’ incompetence for granted. They gave Hillary Clinton an almost certain chance of victory in 2016, so they can never be trusted to accurately gauge Donald Trump — or so the theory goes. However, the polls have been fairly accurate in this election cycle — at least in the beginning.

Trump is a uniquely difficult figure to poll. For a long time, the hostile environment Democrats, the corporate media, and leading cultural figures built around him made expressing pro-Trump sentiments a risky business. Supporting Trump could put friendships in jeopardy, rupture families, or even have dire professional consequences. People knew they weren’t supposed to like him, and if they did, it represented some sort of character flaw. Even to strangers polling them over the phone, people cautiously guard their virtue. It doesn’t help that polls are sometimes strategically weighted toward Democrats, to shape opinion rather than reflect it.

Yet as Trump chugs along with the momentum of a steamroller, this toxic atmosphere has begun to collapse. It’s no longer a social death sentence to say you support Trump — even high-profile celebrities are doing it. Some, from irreverent rapper Azealia Banks to Kelsey Grammer to sports legend Caitlyn Jenner have openly endorsed him, while other notable figures like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan have certainly warmed up to some of his ideas. Partly, it’s herd mentality: middle-of-the-road voters now feel more comfortable expressing their support as social interdictions soften. However, it’s also a conscious shift. People have woken up to the media narratives, realizing that President Joe Biden is the true radical on issues from immigration to the economy, while Trump represents a moderate return to normal.

This helps explain why the polling on Trump has been pretty much spot on so far this election season.

On the day of the caucus in Iowa, the 538 polling average projected Trump would take 52.7% of the vote, while former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley would hold 18.7%. Trump wound up coming in just barely under, at 51%, while Haley over-performed by less than half a point at 19.1%. The key takeaways of the projection held: Trump enjoyed support from a narrow majority, while Haley’s base was a solid, but ultimately insignificant, quarter of the Republican electorate. 

The polls were right again in New Hampshire. On the day of the primary, Trump stood at 53.9% percent in the 538 average,  while Haley stood at 36.3%. Trump slightly overperformed by less than half a point, walking away with 54.3% of the vote. Haley, meanwhile, did substantially better than the polls suggested at 43%, but that is likely because Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out right before the election. Some of his voters moved over to Haley’s camp too quickly for the polls to capture. On Trump, the pollsters were spot on.

In South Carolina, Trump again came in just slightly over a point of the polls — 59.8% projected compared to 61.6%. Haley overperformed by about 5 points, coming in at 39% after a 34% projection. Again, this is likely due to Democrats turning out for Haley to spite Trump, although they would certainly not vote for her in a general election.

It’s only in Michigan that Trump’s polling began to deviate. Haley did about 5 points better than expected, while Trump did about 10 points worse, with uncommitteds making up most of the balance.

From there, things got dicier on Super Tuesday. Polls suggested Trump was likely to win by almost 50 points in Virginia, but he only walked away with about a 28-point victory. Despite a small sample, polls did not predict Haley’s victory in Vermont; in fact, they suggested a roughly 30-point victory for Trump. Haley surged in Massachusetts (an open primary), reducing Trump’s margin of victory to roughly 15 points narrower than projected.

Partly, this is due to averages being skewed from earlier polling before Haley surged in the match-up against Trump. But it shows that polls can’t totally be counted on to accurately reflect the anti-Trump or Trump-ambivalent primary voters. So we get a pretty good idea of the proportions of Trump’s core base, and how they are going to turn out. Moderates and Independents, the types who are lukewarm on Trump and gravitate towards someone a little more centrist like Haley, may turn out to be a wild card that cut into Trump’s support. With Haley’s reported withdrawal from the race following Super Tuesday, the question now becomes: will they gravitate back to Trump, stay home, or vote for Biden?

Trump has been up in nearly every poll since the beginning of 2024. The RealClear polling average currently has him leading Biden by 2.1 points, 47.5% to 45.4%. If within the margin of error from the first three primary polls on Trump, he would still walk away with the win. Without Haley and her last-minute momentum skewing the polls, things may settle back into equilibrium. As the “herd” continues to move toward Trump as an inevitability, it becomes increasingly safe to support him. This makes people both more likely to support him, as well as more likely to admit it to pollsters. As a result, Trump’s lead should widen further and the polls should reflect it even more accurately.

This dynamic works in favor of Haley voters coming back to Trump. They are looking for the perception of moderation, stability and normalcy — and Haley herself will play a large part in convincing her voters whether Trump is the right candidate for the job.

AUTHOR

GAGE KLIPPER

Commentary and analysis writer.

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Satanic Temple Unveils First High School Student-Led Club

The Satanic Temple (TST) announced Tuesday that it will be opening its first high school club in Kansas.

The club is an affiliate of TST’s After School Satan Club (ASSC) program, which only opens a club if a school has a religious club on campus, and has locations in Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York, according to its website. This latest club is TST’s first move into high schools and the first time it’s going to be student-led, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“The first ASSC-affiliated High School Satan Club is debuting in Kansas,” the post reads. “This student-led club has completed all the required steps to be an officially registered on-campus student club and will operate alongside other student-led religious clubs.”

TST did not disclose the high school that the club will be located at, only noting that it will officially debut in January 2024, according to the post.

The ASSC program says that kids who partake in club activities will have a “safe and inclusive alternative to the religious clubs that use threats of eternal damnation to convert school children to their belief system,” according to the website. A video on the TST’s YouTube page shows a goat, TST’s mascot, in school with a voice in the background that sings “Satan is not a bad guy” and “Satan looks for truth.”

“Unlike our counterparts, who publicly measure their success in young children’s ‘professions of faith,’ the After School Satan Club program focuses on science, critical thinking, creative arts, and good works for the community,” TST’s website reads. “While engaged in all of these activities,  we want clubgoers to have a good time.”

TST came under heavy scrutiny recently after revealing its statue of Baphomet in the Iowa state capitol building in December. The display was destroyed a few weeks later after Christian veteran Michael Cassidy beheaded the statue.

TST did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

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‘Righteous Crusade’: Trump Promises American ‘Comeback’ As He Rallies In Iowa Weeks Before Caucus Day

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA — Former President Donald Trump promised voters that he would restore America in the “greatest comeback in history” during a rally in Iowa Saturday.

Trump was attending the “Commit to Caucus Event” in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at a local community college, where he spoke to hundreds of voters in the key primary state. The former president said that it was time the fix the economy, close the southern border, crack down on Iran and China and keep gender ideology out of schools, rallying just weeks before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucus sets the tone for the primary season.

“It’s going to be the greatest comeback in history — I’m not talking about comeback politically because I don’t care about that — it will be the greatest comeback for a country.”

Trump further described it as a “righteous crusade” that would “liberate” the American people from “Biden and the criminals in the Biden administration.” The statements were met with thunderous applause and cheering from the audience.

Trump took aim at Biden on several occasions during the event. He claimed that he would get rid of Biden’s executive order regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence and said he would “ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens.”

Trump addressed foreign policy issues in Ukraine, China, Iran and Israel, the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel “would never have happened” under his administration because Iran was “broke” and would have remained so if Biden hadn’t been elected. He said his administration’s sanctions prevented Iran from having the “money to fund Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Trump also targeted Republican rivals like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, calling Haley “bird brain.” He also went after Haley for running against him and not being “loyal.”

“They told me no one cares about loyalty, but I said I think people do care about loyalty,” Trump told Iowa voters.

Voters who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation before the speech said that Trump was the only option for the GOP nominee due to his previous experience as president and his track record of getting things done. Several dismissed Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’ and religious leader Bob Vander Plaats’ endorsement of DeSantis, saying that it will make little difference in the long run because Iowa voters, even religious voters, are behind Trump.

Trump maintains a big lead in the Iowa polls as the caucus date approaches. The Cedar Rapids rally was Trump’s second of the day, as he campaigned in Ankeny hours before while DeSantis appeared before supporters in Jasper County, east of Des Moines.

“We will not bend, we will not break, we will not yield, we will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never, ever, back down,” Trump said.

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘He’s Proved Himself’: Iowa Voters Tout Trump’s White House Experience Ahead Of Cedar Rapids Speech

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Trump Crashes A College Football Tailgate

Former President Donald Trump showed up to a fraternity’s tailgate party before a college football game Saturday.

Trump made the appearance at a pregame function hosted by Iowa State University’s (ISU) Alpha Gamma Rho chapter ahead of ISU’s Saturday home game against Iowa University’s Hawkeyes. Trump waved to a large crowd that had assembled outside of the fraternity house, and even tried his hand behind the grill, footage posted to Twitter shows.

He socialized with tailgate’s attendees and took a shift behind the grill to flip burgers.

Trump also toured the fraternity house, where the brotherhood greeted him with raucous applause as he entered a common area.

“You’re young, handsome… I’d trade you right now,” Trump said while addressing the fraternity brothers.

Trump made the appearance to rub shoulders with Iowans ahead of the Iowa primary caucus, set for Jan. 15, 2024.

While Trump lost the Iowa caucus in the 2016 Republican primaries, he currently leads all other Republican candidates in the state by a wide margin ahead of the 2024 caucus, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who currently stands as the closest challenger to Trump in the polls, also attended the ISU-Iowa game. He joined Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in the stands.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Countdown To The First 2024 GOP Caucus Begins

The Republican party’s first presidential caucus will be held in Iowa on Jan. 15, 2024, the Iowa GOP announced Saturday.

The Jan. 15 date, which is also Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, was unanimously approved Saturday by the State Central Committee of the Republican Party of Iowa. Iowa’s caucus, scheduled weeks ahead of when it was during the last two election cycles, means the first official votes of the 2024 presidential election are now nearly six months away.

“After our state legislature and governor took needed action earlier this year to preempt Iowa Democrats’ plans to derail the Iowa Caucus by running a de facto primary election instead, we are also proud to affirm that Iowa will continue to honor our half-century-old promises to the other carveout states,” Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement. “We remain committed to maintaining Iowa’s cherished First-in-the-Nation Caucuses, and look forward to holding a historic caucus in the coming months and defeating Joe Biden come November 2024.”

The Democratic National Committee’s revised presidential primary schedule approved in February places South Carolina as the first, removing Iowa’s top spot. Iowa Democrats have not yet set a date for their caucus but have suggested holding it on the same date as Republicans, allowing voters to use mail-in ballots and delaying the release of results to comply with the new schedule, according to the Associated Press.

“No matter what, Iowa Democrats are committed to moving forward with the most inclusive caucus process in Iowa’s history,” Iowa Democratic Party chair Rita Hart said in a statement, according to NBC News. “We’re committed to doing what’s good for Democrats, what’s good for Iowa, and what’s good for democracy.”

The South Carolina GOP has set its 2024 primary date for Feb. 24, according to AP News.

Meanwhile, the Nevada Republican Party filed a lawsuit against the state in May to continue holding its presidential caucus after the legislature passed a law switching to a primary election following major issues during the 2020 Democratic caucus.

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Iowa Candidate Under Fire for Call to Define Islam as ‘Militant Cultural Imperialism Seeking World Domination’

My latest in PJ Media:

The real pandemic today is not the coronavirus, but cowardice. Nonetheless, even in these days of political correctness, wokeness, the cancel culture, and “hate speech,” there are a few public figures with courage. One of them is Rick Phillips, a Republican Congressional candidate from Iowa, who has dared to grasp the third rail of American public life and state that Islam is not actually the cuddly religion of peace that every enlightened American assumes it to be at this point.

The Des Moines Register reported Monday that Phillips’ “platform calls for redefining Islam as ‘militant cultural imperialism seeking world domination,’” and that he “drew fire Monday for saying he doesn’t believe Islam is protected under the First Amendment.

Phillips stated on Quad Cities TV station WHBF that the Founding Fathers had only Christianity in mind when they wrote the First Amendment. “They were not talking about anti-Christian beliefs,” he explained. “Now, if a person doesn’t want to believe in Christ, that’s their business. But to say that this First Amendment right includes all religions in the world, I think, is erroneous.”

The usual reaction ensued, Robert McCaw of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), demanded that both the Iowa Republican Party and the national Republican Party “repudiate these Islamophobic, unconstitutional views.” McCaw thundered: “The Constitution must protect Americans of all faiths. The kind of hatred and anti-American views promoted by Mr. Phillips places in danger both constitutional protections of religious freedoms and the safety of ordinary American Muslims.”

Responding like the good invertebrate that most Republican Party leaders are, Iowa party spokesman Aaron Britt said that Phillips’ statements “are not reflective of the views of the Republican Party of Iowa.”

Lost in all this predictable intimidation on the one hand and equally predictable pusillanimity on the other was the question of whether or not Phillips was right. Surely everyone can agree, or should agree, that the First Amendment is not and was never intended to be a license to commit all manner of crimes if such activity is mandated by one’s religion. No one, Muslim or non-Muslim, should be considered anything but innocent until proven guilty, but sooner or later the United States and all non-Muslim countries is going to have to have a public conversation about how much to tolerate a belief system that is itself radically intolerant, authoritarian, supremacist, and violent.

Can Muslims in the U.S. repudiate those aspects of Islam? Should they? This discussion needs to take place, but right now it is covered over by claims of “Islamophobia.” In the same way, lost in the shuffle also was the question of whether or not Islam really is “militant cultural imperialism seeking world domination.”

Inconveniently for Robert McCaw and his ilk, there are certainly some Muslims who think it is. I could quote violent passages of the Qur’an, but those might be waved away with the dismissive and erroneous claim that the Bible contains similar exhortations to violence. Let’s focus instead on what Islamic authorities say. One might get the impression that Islam is not a religion of peace from the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence (madhahib):

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

U.S. Census Bureau: Demographic and Economic Profiles of Iowa’s Electorate

WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In advance of the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, the Census Bureau presents a variety of statistics that give an overall profile of each state’s voting-age population and industries. This is the first in a series of such profiles for all the states holding primaries or caucuses. Statistics include:

cb16-tps09_graphic_voting_iowa

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov

Iowa Poll: Trump and Clinton Surge 10 Days Before the Caucus — Cruz & Sanders Faltering

trump clintonBOSTON, MA /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In a new, statewide Iowa poll, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have surged to 9 and 10 point leads in Iowa with just 10 days before the first in the nation voting begins. Clinton receives 52% of the vote and Sanders at 43%. Trump leads his Republican rivals with 33%, followed byTed Cruz at 23%, Marco Rubio (14%), and Ben Carson (9%) round out the top four with the rest of field under 6%; Rick Santorum — who won the 2012 Iowa GOP Caucus with 25% of the vote — has less than 1% of Iowans this time around, and Mike Huckabee who won the 2008 Iowa Caucus is at 2%.

The survey began January 18, the day after the latest Democrat debate, and concluded January 20, the day following Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump.

“At this point, while both Trump and Clinton have significant leads in their own primaries the electorate appears volatile, and it is still up in the air as to who will win,” said Henry Krause, a Senior Political Communication major at Emerson College, who helped oversee the project. The data fluctuated on the three days of polling on both sides with Clinton holding a 14 point lead on Monday, dropping to 9 points on Tuesday and was at 1 point, 48% to 47% on Wednesday. Trump also sees variability over the three days watching a 13 point lead on Monday drop to 4 points on Tuesday and rebounding on Wednesday to 12 points 35% to 22% over Cruz.

Iowa voters, however, are not thrilled with their 2016 Presidential options. The top three GOP candidates all have negative favorability numbers with Trump at 37% favorable to 55% unfavorable, Rubio at 37% favorable to 47% unfavorable and Cruz is worse at 34% favorable to 54% favorable. Clinton has the highest favorable rating at 42% but also carries a high unfavorable rating of 53%.

In the Democrat Primary, Clinton holds the support of registered Democrats 54% to 42% over Sanders, while Sanders holds a 44% to 36% lead among registered Independents. On the Republican side Trump holds a 34% to 24% over Cruz among registered Republicans and extends his lead to 15 points among Independents 30% to 15% over Cruz.

The survey also found that 66% of Iowan voters did not know a person of Muslim faith and that 28% said they did not have a Hispanic friend of acquaintance.

Caller ID

The ECPS poll was conducted from Monday, January 18 at 6:00 p.m., through Wednesday evening January 20. The polling sample was a random selection of registered voters purchased through Aristotle Inc. Likely primary voters were classified through a screening question. For non-completes with a working residential phone line, at least five callbacks were attempted. The Democratic and GOP Presidential primaries consisted of 258 and 271 adult registered likely primary voters in Iowa, with a margin of error of +/-6.1% and +/-5.9% respectively at a 95 percent confidence level, was used for the additional statewide questions. Data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response system and weighted based on 2012 General Election voting to reflect likely voter populations in Iowa. The full methodology and results can be found at www.theecps.com

RELATED ARTICLE: One Week Out: The Problem With Polling Iowa

Hillary Clinton Thinks Common Core “A Good Idea”

Hillary Clinton was in Iowa today, campaigning.

According to The Guardian’s live blog coverage by Tom McCarthy, Hillary Clinton is sympathetic towards “the plight of Common Core.”McCarthy reports::

Clinton bemoaned the plight of Common Core educational standards, a good idea she said had been taken hostage by the political debate.

Implicit in Clinton’s message is that Common Core would have been just fine except that it became entangled in politics.

Get a clue, Hillary: Common Core was birthed in politics.

But I think you know that.

The National Governors Association (NGA) is one of two organizations that holds the Common Core copyright. That right there is a problem for a so-called “state led” education initiative.

Then there is U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan using federal money to pay for two Common-Core-associated testing consortia– and announcing as much in 2009, before there even was a Common Core.

Never mind that the other Common Core copyright owner, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), has a CEO, Gene Wilhoit, who thought it would be a good idea to ask billionaire Bill Gates in 2008 to bankroll Common Core.

Politically-connected edupreneur David Coleman– who did business in 2002 (the early days of No Child Left Behind) with Arne Duncan during Duncan’s time as CEO of Chicago Public Schools– was with Wilhoit when he asked Gates for his money.

Then, a few years later, Wilhoit moved on from CCSSO and was replaced by former Pearson associate, Chris Minnich.

Following his CCSSO retirement, Wilhoit conveniently joined Coleman’s Common-Core-centered for-profit-gone-nonprofit, Student Achievement Partners.

And Coleman moved on to become the president of an assessment company, College Board.

So, you see, Hillary, Common Core was never “not political.”

On June 12, 2015, my book on the history, development, and promotion of Common Core, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, will be released.

Clinton should read it.

But back to Iowa.

At least Hillary publicly admitted her sympathy for Common Core.

This puts her on the same side as another 2016 presidential hopeful: Republican Jeb Bush.

However, according to McCarthy’s report of Clinton’s campaign kickoff in Iowa, Clinton plans to dodge directly addressing education in her campaign:

Clinton laid out four campaign planks: 1) revitalizing economy 2) supporting families 3) getting dirty $$ out of politics 4) defending against threats seen and unseen

Surely she knows that she will be asked again and again– and again– about Common Core and its lead-balloon, federally-funded consortium tests.

Clinton will have numerous occasions to “bemoan its plight.”

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