As of this writing, it's just two days before the final votes of the 2024 election are cast, and things could not be closer. That is unless you saw the new poll conducted by Ann Selzer in Iowa, which was released on Saturday evening. According to the "gold standard" pollster, Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump by three points in the Hawkeye State. 

For context, Trump won the state by eight points in 2020 against Joe Biden, and it has become solidly red over the last decade. For Harris to be up there at all, much less by three points, is legitimately shocking. Expectedly, the news has Democrats jazzed, with some extrapolating the result nationally and suggesting a landslide is on the way for the vice president. 

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So that's the setup, and while I've spent all cycle abiding by a self-enforced rule of not dismissing polls that don't fit my preferred outcome, often angering people on my own side of the aisle, this one is such an unbelievable outlier that I think making an exception is called for.

To be frank, I don't think Selzer's final offering in Iowa is anywhere close to reality, and there's empirical data to support that viewpoint. For example, the poll has Harris leading with seniors by 19 points. Trump won seniors there by nine points in 2020. The idea that Trump has lost 28 points among seniors in a relatively red state just doesn't compute. 

The overall composition of the electorate in Selzer's poll would be Democrat +3. Again, this is a state that Republicans +8 in 2020. Nothing else in the crosstabs makes any sense either. 

With all that said, let's pretend the numbers above are possible and that there is a historic seismic shift away from Trump happening in Iowa. There's another data point in the poll that doesn't include the former president that should have people looking cross-eyed. According to Selzer, not only are Democrats going to win two of Iowa's four congressional districts, but they are going to do so in blowouts. 

For context, Republicans currently hold all four of Iowa's congressional seats. Yet, we are supposed to believe that Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, an incumbent, is losing by 16 points to her Democrat challenger? There is no chance IA-2 is that close either. 

Further, according to the poll, the top issue for people in Iowa isn't inflation or the economy. It's "democracy." Iowans supposedly also care more about abortion than the economy. 

Lastly, it's worth noting that Selzer had Trump up 14 points just a few months ago. Are we really to believe Iowa, a red state, has shifted 17 points toward the Democrat nominee? I mean, come on.

How did we end up here? Did Ann Selzer release this poll to juice Harris given her long history of being allied with figures like Hillary Clinton, Claire McCaskill, and J.B. Pritzker? I don't know, and I'm not going to go that far. It's possible she genuinely ended up with an outlier and had the guts to go ahead and release it anyway instead of massaging it like some other pollsters would have done.

With all that said, I have no idea who is going to win this election. In fact, with just a couple of days left of voting, I'm more convinced than ever that this is a pure toss-up race. What I'm sure of, though, is that this Selzer poll is not close to what the real result will be in Iowa, and those using it to predict a Democratic landslide nationally are fooling themselves. Maybe I'll look like an idiot in a few days for saying that, but I'm willing to take my chances.