Midwest Newsroom-Emerson College Polling project measures voter sentiment on political, social and economic issues

A new survey from The Midwest Newsroom and Emerson College Polling Center asked more than one-thousand registered voters in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska about measures on Nov. 5 ballots as well as a variety of social and economic subjects. STLPR is a member of The Midwest Newsroom, a partnership between public radio member stations in four states and NPR.

The separate surveys of each state were conducted between Sept. 26 to Oct. 2, 2024.

Key findings:

• More than 60% of respondents in all four states said a college degree is not worth the cost.
• About 10% of respondents in each state said climate change is caused "entirely by human activities" while about 24% said it's caused "mostly by human activities."
• When asked where they find news about state and local politics they trust, about 35% of respondents across all four states responded "local media," while about 25% said "social media sites."

On the key 2024 election issue of abortion, the poll asked questions specific to each state.

In Missouri, when asked whether Missouri's abortion law is too strict, not strict enough, or about right, 56% of respondents answered "too strict." The survey also asked Missourians about the minimum wage and funding for professional sports stadiums.

Other questions on all the surveys covered gender-affirming care, school and library book bans and whether the country is on the right track.

Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling said:

"Collaborating with The Midwest Newsroom gives us a rare opportunity to blend the insights from pre-election polling with the on-the-ground insights of local journalists, providing a unique and invaluable perspective ahead of the 2024 election. By going beyond the ballot test questions, this partnership elevates the critical issues that matter most to communities in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska."

Holly Edgell, managing editor of The Midwest Newsroom, said the project aimed to gauge voter sentiment across a range of issues, themes and topics that recur in popular discourse.

"These are the questions of our time," she said. "We were less interested in asking how people are planning to vote in November than asking how people are thinking about issues close to home as they grapple with them in daily life."

Edgell said the project will help reporters in the region in their coverage of issues that elicit strong opinions but can also be more nuanced than conventional wisdom suggests.

"Emerson College Polling worked closely with us to develop surveys that speak very specifically to the four states that The Midwest Newsroom serves," she said.

About the project/methodology

The sample of registered voters for each state, n=1,000, has a credibility interval, similar to a poll's margin of error (MOE), of +/- 3 percentage points. Data was collected September 24-27, 2024. The data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, age, voter registration data, and region.

The Midwest Newsroom-Emerson College Polling Project includes Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. For more information about the polls and questions about how your organization can use the data, contact [email protected].

About The Midwest Newsroom

Based at KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri, The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio, the Kansas News Service and NPR. Learn more about The Midwest Newsroom here.

About Emerson College Polling Center

Emerson College Polling is a non-partisan organization dedicated to accurately reflecting populations through public opinion research. Emerson College Polling conducts research on civic behavior, polling methodology, public health, and public policy.

Emerson College Polling (ECP) is a Charter Member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Transparency Initiative. AAPOR is the leading professional organization of public opinion and survey research professionals in the United States, with members from academia, media, government, the nonprofit sector, and private industry. ECP publishes not only its full topline results, but also its full crosstabs for each survey, aiming to ensure that data is easily accessible and available to researchers.