Kamala Harris has surpassed Donald Trump in a new poll in Iowa, a state Trump easily won in 2016 and 2020, according to a bombshell new poll.
Women and older voters are responsible for the remarkable turnaround in the Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper and released on Saturday. The Trump campaign criticised the findings, and pointed to another poll the same day that gives the Republican a ten point lead in the same state.
The Selzer poll of 808 likely voters, who were surveyed between October 28 and 31, has Harris leading Trump 47%-44% in a state that has been trending deeply Republican in recent years. It is within the 3.4 percentage point margin of error, but it marked a turnaround from a September Iowa Poll that had Trump with a 4-point lead, the newspaper reported.
“The poll shows that women particularly those who are older or who are politically independent are driving the late shift toward Harris,” the Register said. The two candidates’ starkly different positions on abortion will likely have been a contributing factor in the unexpected numbers by the respected pollster.
Selzer has a history of predicting accurate results in presidential and senate races, with figures below showing polling vs outcome for the last 12 years.
Trump won Iowa in his past two presidential campaigns by more than 9 percentage points in 2016 and 8 points in 2020.
“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.
“Age and gender are the two most dynamic factors that are explaining these numbers.”
The Trump campaign released a memo from its chief pollster and its chief data consultant calling the Des Moines Register poll “a clear outlier,” and saying that an Emerson College poll – also released Saturday – more closely reflected the state of the Iowa electorate.
The Emerson College Polling/RealClearDefense survey of a similar number of likely voters on November 1 and 2 had a starkly different result, with Trump leading Harris by 10 points. This poll also has a 3.4 percentage point margin of error. The Emerson College survey had Trump with strong leads over Harris among men and independents, while Harris was performing well with those under the age of 30.
And Iowa GOP chair Jeff Kaufman lashed out at the poll, the pollster and the newspaper after it was published.”
The @DMRegister & @jaselzer just lost any shred of credibility they had left,” Kaufman tweeted on Saturday.
“This should be classified as spreading propaganda with polling like this. It’s sad to watch how far they’ve fallen. President Trump will win Iowa.”
Just a few hours earlier, Kaufman had tweeted that the Selzer poll would say “Trump is on track to beat Harris by at least eight points in Iowa so they can protect their reputation right before Election Day”.
Nationally, Harris and Trump are seen locked in a tight race for the White House, with early voting well underway ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.
Whoever wins Iowa will collect six Electoral College votes, with 270 needed to capture the White House.
Both parties have been concentrating their efforts during the closing days of their campaigns on “battleground” states such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Reuters contributed to this report