Iowa Poll: Retention of justices a tossup

Des Moines Register

By GRANT SCHULTE

The retention battle over Iowa's three Supreme Court justices is a tossup in the wake of last year's ruling that allowed same-sex couples to marry, a new Iowa Poll shows.

Forty-four percent of Iowans who plan to cast a ballot in the retention election say they will vote "yes" to all three justices. Forty percent will vote to remove all three, and 16 percent say they want to retain some.

More than one-fourth of all likely voters are either undecided or plan to leave the retention boxes blank, according to the poll.

"This is very tricky to interpret," said J. Ann Selzer, the pollster for The Des Moines Register's Iowa Poll. "I think it suggests that some justices, and perhaps all, will be removed. It lines up along Democrat and Republican lines pretty easily, except for low-income voters, which is typically a Democratic constituency."