Iowa Governor 2026Safe
Rob Sand (D) vs. Zach Lahn (R)
Precision Combined forecast
89%
Rob Sand (D) to be Iowa's next governor
- Rob Sand (D)
- 89.0% · −809
- Zach Lahn (R)
- 11.0% · +809
- Sources used
- 4 of 5
- Market money behind it
- $975k
As of Oct 13, 7:37 AM ET · refreshes about every 30 minutes
Polymarket
26% weight- Rob Sand88.5% ▲2
- Zach Lahn11.5% ▼1
$173k traded, 1¢ spread
PredictIt
9% weight- Democratic89¢
- Republican15¢
PredictIt publishes no volume, 3¢ spread
Public polls
33% weightD +8.1
Rob Sand 50.8% · Zach Lahn 42.7%
6 pollsters · latest ended Oct 6, 2026
6 pollsters, latest ended Oct 6, 1 with a partisan sponsor (half credit)
Precision member poll
not usedNot fielded yet. Joins this number when the Precision member panel launches.
RealClearPolitics
for comparisonRCP doesn’t license its polling averages, so we link to them instead of copying the number.
Compare on RealClearPolling ↗How the Precision Funnel™ weighed this race
Market money behind the number: $975k
- 33%Public polls6 pollsters, latest ended Oct 6, 1 with a partisan sponsor (half credit)
- 32%Kalshi$802k traded, 1¢ spread
- 26%Polymarket$173k traded, 1¢ spread
- 9%PredictItPredictIt publishes no volume, 3¢ spread
- —Precision member pollNot fielded yet. Joins this number when the Precision member panel launches.
- —Attention: news volume, news tone, Wikipedia pageviewsClosed: not enough news coverage or pageviews to measure yet. 0% unless the gate opens; 5% to 15% when it does. Signals ↓
Weight = trust × evidence for this race, scaled to 100% across the sources used. The rule ↓
Attention and momentum
Gate closedNo clear movement in news coverage or public interest between Rob Sand and Zach Lahn. It is shown here and not blended into the number. Gate closed: not enough news coverage or pageviews to measure yet.
News volume36% of bucket
—
Not enough days of data yet
News tone29% of bucket
—
Not enough days of coverage to score tone
Wikipedia pageviews36% of bucket
—
Not enough days of data yet
No news articles a day stored yet.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: GDELT.
No average news tone stored yet.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: GDELT.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: Wikipedia.
● Rob SandGDELT seriesWikipedia article● Zach LahnGDELT series
Not measured yet: search interest (15%) and social volume and sentiment (15%). Their share is spread over the measured signals until they are wired. News tone is the tone of coverage, not of voters. The gate rule →
Recent public polls
Sand 49 · Lahn 45.3
Oct 5 – Oct 6, 2026 · 650 LV
Sand 51 · Lahn 42
Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2026 · 801 LV
The New York Times/Siena University
Sand 52 · Lahn 41
Sep 22 – Oct 1, 2026 · 606 LV
Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research
Sand 53 · Lahn 44
Sep 24 – Sep 28, 2026 · 1008 LV
Sand 54 · Lahn 42
Sep 17 – Sep 20, 2026 · 1050 RV
Sand 46 · Lahn 42
Sep 14 – Sep 16, 2026 · 831 LV
Lahn 41 · Sand 51
Sep 3 – Sep 8, 2026 · 2041 LV
Sand 50 · Lahn 39
Sep 3 – Sep 8, 2026 · 2167 RV
Sand 49 · Lahn 46
Aug 31 – Sep 1, 2026 · 750 LV
Sand 51 · Lahn 46
Aug 27 – Aug 29, 2026 · 600 LV
Sand 47.8 · Lahn 43.6
Aug 20 – Aug 23, 2026 · 500 LV
Sand 48 · Lahn 43
Aug 2 – Aug 4, 2026 · 712 LV
Beacon Research/Shaw & Co. Research
Sand 53 · Lahn 44
Jun 23 – Jun 27, 2026 · 1003 RV
Sand 47.7 · Lahn 43.4
Jun 16 – Jun 19, 2026 · 600 LV
The New York Times/Siena University
Sand 48 · Lahn 47
Jun 15 – Jun 17, 2026 · 600 LV
How the Precision Funnel™ builds the Precision Combined number
Everything available on a race goes into the top of the funnel. No source has a fixed percentage: each one’s weight comes from how much evidence it carries for this race, by the published rule on the right.
- Public polls. Every public poll of the race, national, state or local, is vetted before it counts: how many people it reached, how recent it is, whether it screened for likely voters, and whether a party or campaign paid for it. Campaign internal polls are left out.
- Prediction markets, priced by money at risk. For each market we add up the dollars traded (contracts times price). A market with under $10k traded, a spread wider than 10¢, or a 15-point jump on under $25k is left out, because one buyer can set that price.
- Local and regional sources. Newspaper, radio and university polls get the same vetting as step 1. Today they arrive through the public poll feed; we are adding the local sources national feeds miss. In races national pollsters skip, such as state cabinet offices, they may be most of what exists.
- Attention and momentum. News volume and tone (GDELT) and Wikipedia pageviews for the two leading candidates, this week against the three weeks before. Attention is not votes, so it counts only through a gate: two independent sources with enough volume, all moving the same way. Then it carries 5% to 15% of the number; otherwise 0%, shown beside the number. Search interest and social platforms join as they are wired.
- our own member poll. Our panel, weighted to the voter file on party, age, sex, education, income and region. It starts with the same trust as outside polls and earns more only through a scored track record.Not live yet
- The number. Market prices are scaled to add to 100%, a poll lead becomes a win chance with a bell curve 6 points wide, and the sources are averaged with their weights. Every race page prints the weights it got and why.
Full methodology →Why blend? Read the research →How we’ll be scored →
The weighting rule
Weight = trust × evidence, then scaled so the sources used add to 100%.
| Source | Trust | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Kalshi, Polymarket | 1 | Dollars traded ÷ (dollars traded + $50k). $50k counts half, $1M about 95%. |
| PredictIt | ½ | Fixed at ½, since PredictIt publishes no volume and caps each contract at $850. |
| Public polls | 1 | Grows with each vetted poll: full credit at 600 respondents, half credit every 21 days of age, less for registered voters or all adults, half for a partisan sponsor. |
| Precision member poll | 1 | Effective sample ÷ 800 (max 1) × share of demographic groups that match the voter file. Left out under 200 respondents. |
So a Senate race with deep markets and many polls lands near an even split, while a race no market lists and only one local paper polled leans almost entirely on the polls that exist. The constants above are the same for every race; changing one is a new method version, dated and logged. Trust values will be refit on our own scored history and the change published. RealClearPolitics is linked for comparison but not used: RCP has no public data feed and its terms don’t allow republishing its averages. Market prices reflect traders’ money, not a poll of voters. PredictIt data is shown under its non-commercial license. The Funnel never uses a number we did not measure or a source we cannot name.