The Iowa Policy and Opinion Lab (IPOL) just released its Public Opinion Report on Iowa Poll #249. The report summarizes research done by IPOL and its student research groups after restoring data from Iowa Poll #249, originally conducted by the Des Moines Register in September 1981. This is part of an ongoing effort to restore previously lost Iowa Polls that were unearthed in 2020.
The report evaluates Iowans' responses to questions from Iowa Poll #249, focusing on sets of questions related to constitutional rights, teaching Iowa history, the Iowa Caucuses, race, and personalities and trends from 1981 that people were most tired of. We report on the distribution of responses and describe how responses vary across notable political and demographic variables.
Eventually we hope to release the data for public use. We have been working with UI Libraries, who house a collection of later Iowa Polls, and the Des Moines Register, which has been very helpful in sharing information on the Iowa Poll in general as well as specifics related to Iowa Poll #249 to help validate our data entry.