Iowa Democrats had gotten their hopes up, and honestly, how could they not? On Saturday night, J. Ann Selzer — the most famous pollster in Iowa, if not the entire country — released her latest picks studyfinding Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three points in a state the former president held by eight in 2020.

The poll appeared to portend a big night for Harris not only in Iowa but also in the Midwest, suggesting a surge of support from women that would virtually ensure her election. It also found a pair of Democratic House candidates in Iowa, Republican incumbents, indicating a Democratic majority in the chamber.

On Monday night, as Democrats gathered in a Des Moines gym for a rally, Selzer’s poll was all anyone could talk about. “I know it was interesting,” Lanon Baccam, the Democrat running for the local congressional seat, told the crowd, which erupted into cheers at the mere mention of the poll, “but I don’t think anyone in this room is surprised. “

Read: How to understand the election returns so far

The next night, many of the same Democrats gathered for a watch party in the ballroom of a downtown hotel, their hopes turned to nerves and finally to resignation when a picture appeared that much more gloomy. The Selzer poll was way off, and Trump was poised to win Iowa by his largest margin yet. Iowa Democrats haven’t had much to celebrate since Barack Obama won in 2012, and last night was no different.

“Iowa has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Republicans are in the lead right now,” Bill Brauch, chairman of the Polk County Democratic Party, which includes Des Moines, told me. “I was hoping that would change one day, but it’s not today.”

Democrats were bullish about Iowa for the same reasons they were bullish around the country. After giving up most of the 2020 pandemic-related door-knocking, they built a robust turnout operation that dwarfed GOP organizing efforts, which Democrats saw little evidence of as they canvassed neighborhoods. Enthusiasm, Brauch told me, was “through the roof.” And indeed, he said the turnout it was up in Des Moines. But more voters turned Republican than Democrats expected, shrinking the margins Democrats needed to offset GOP strength in rural counties where Republican turnout was also high.

The dynamic was the same across the country as returns came in: Despite strong turnout in many areas, Harris couldn’t match Joe Biden’s 2020 performance in counties that powered his victory over Trump. As of early Wednesday morning, the GOP had flipped at least two Senate seats in West Virginia and Ohio, giving Republicans a near majority but a chance to unseat Democratic incumbents in several other battlegrounds that were too close of call. The House landscape was less certain, as Democrats still had a chance to flip enough GOP districts to regain control.

They needed a net gain of four House seats for a majority, and while some of the party’s best pick-up opportunities were in blue states like New York and California, Democrats began to see races trending in the Midwest in their direction in recent weeks, opening up. it increases the possibility of more paths to majority and higher earnings at the national level. But the Midwest boom didn’t materialize.

Democrats have poured money late into Iowa’s two most competitive House races, where they saw evidence that voters wanted to punish Republicans for passing a state abortion ban — one of the strictest in the nation — that it went into effect this summer after months of legal battles. . In 2022, low Democratic turnout in places like Polk County helped Republicans flip a House seat, giving them all four in the state. Still, the abortion ban raised hopes among Democrats that Iowa would see the same blue shift that other states have seen in 2022 after the Supreme Court struck it down. roe— a belief that the Selzer survey reinforced.

Selzer has achieved an almost mythical status among political insiders. On Monday night, when I asked Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary and former two-term governor of Iowa, if he believed her latest findings, he responded with a detailed history of Selzer’s past predictive successes. In 2008, her polls correctly predicted that Obama would beat Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, and in both of the last two presidential elections, she came close to matching Trump’s margin of victory when most other polls underestimated her the support. “Anyone who doubts Ann Selzer when it comes to Iowa does so at their own peril,” Vilsack told me. “So I believe?” he added, referring to her poll on Saturday. “Absolute.”

On Tuesday night, Democrats who showed up to cheer realized that Selzer’s poll was just another poll — one of many that appeared to once again underestimate Trump’s support. As the night wore on, they held out hope that Baccam would defeat Rep. Sam Nunn, a first-term Republican. (As of this writing, the Democrat in Iowa’s other competitive House race is behind nearly every precinct reporting.) But a podium set up for victory speeches remained empty, and when, around 11:20 p.m. local time, , the Associated Press called the race for Nunn, only a handful of Democrats were there to see the news.

Brauch, the county’s Democratic chairman, couldn’t explain how his party didn’t stay one more time. “I don’t think any of us know the answer,” he told me. “If we did, we’d be better off tonight.”