Opinion polling may be very useful for making political predictions but there is one thing which is even better – elections – as one recent US one illustrates.

On August 26 an election in Iowa’s 1^st Senate district – a seat Trump won by 11% in 2024 – the Democrat candidate Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch by a margin of 10% breaking the supermajority that Iowa Republicans had in the state legislature.

Iowa is normally considered a bell weather State because of its long-standing Caucuses – seen as indicators of Presidential candidates chances. Candidates who win the Caucuses get momentum.

And, of course this latest result doesn’t mean Iowa will vote Democrat in a Presidential election – but it is still a significant shift in attitudes.

There are also some mitigating factors which need to be considered. Democrats outspent the Republicans and ran a strong get-out-the vote campaign and had many volunteers canvassing. Moreover, turnout was low with about 24% of potential voters voting.

The Republican candidate also carried some baggage having compared abortion rights supporter to the perpetrators of the Holocaust and argued that women who become pregnant through rape or incest should carry pregnancies to term.

But nevertheless, lots of voters changed sides and lots more were not energised enough to vote. Iowa is also experiencing some significant demographic changes with much less reliance on agriculture and more population growth in cities.

Nevertheless, the Iowa result gives credence to the latest opinion polls which are also bad for the Republicans.

Elliott Moris’ Strength in Numbers website suggests that on average in 2025 Democrat candidates in special elections are running about 16% points ahead of Kamala Harris’ margin versus Trump in November 2024. The latest polls also suggest 49% of voters will back a Democratic candidate in their local House district compared with 41% for the Republican candidate. The remaining 10% remain undecided or say they aren’t sure.

The Democrat numbers are the highest recorded so far and the trend since July has been good for the Democrats and poor for the Republicans.

Strength in Numbers also looked at whether people think the country is on the right or wrong track. G. Elliott Morris says that this is not the most reliable indicator of attitudes because – while it is one of the longest-running question in US polling history – it is rarely positive. Nevertheless, the current figure is 57% saying the country is on the wrong track and 33% think it is on the right track.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal-NORC poll found that only 25% of Americans believe they have a good chance of improving their standard of living. They obviously are not lucky enough to be in the group of billionaires and trillionaires who have gotten very rich and are about to get huge tax cuts.

Nearly 70% of respondents said it was no longer possible to work hard and get ahead – clearly a profound ending to the American dream.

Meanwhile only 38% of Americans approved of Trump’s Washington DC  troop deployments.

Strength in Numbers also had some other good news – voters back fair elections. Not that this will stop Trump trying to make it harder to vote nor Republicans planning gerrymanders and new voter suppression tactics.

…and there are always many ways in the Trump world to hide problems. During the visit of the Polish President Trump arranged for a fly over in honour of a Polish pilot killed in a training exercise. The fly over just happened to drown out the voices of more than 100 demonstrating women who had been victims of Epstein and his cronies sexual abuse and rape.

What role Trump played in the Epstein era is another question – although he was filmed boasting of grabbing women by the pussy so a wild guess would not be out of order.