IPOL: Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab

Starting in fall 2022, IPOL has been working to enter and analyze data from some recently unearthed Iowa Polls from the 1940s through the 1980s. This academic year we are working with Iowa Poll #248 from 1981. Keep an eye out for our news releases and full report this spring.

The Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab (IPOL) has released its Public Opinion Report on Iowa Poll #213--which was originally conducted by the Des Moines Register in July 1974--after restoring its contents. The report evaluates Iowans' responses on this survey, focusing on sets of questions related to the economy, inflation, tax policy, the 1976 Presidential election, President Nixon, and Watergate.

Data restored from a 1974 Iowa Poll shows that Iowans favored federal health care for low income people over free health care for everyone or catastrophic health care only. These data come from Iowa Poll #213, a random sample survey of 601 Iowans from July of 1974, which has been restored as part of a larger project to recover lost data from past Iowa polls.

IPOL students presented a research poster with some of our findings from Iowa Poll #213 from 1974 at the Spring Undergraduate Research Festival sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Research.