Iowa poll surprisingly bends toward Harris

Trump has taken Iowa in every election he's contended in, making this a promising sign for the vice president

Published November 3, 2024 12:10PM (EST)

Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks as Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz looks on during a campaign event at the Liacouras Center at Temple University on August 6, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks as Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz looks on during a campaign event at the Liacouras Center at Temple University on August 6, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

While the focus has been on expectedly tight swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a state in the heartland has shocked pollsters. 

Kamala Harris leads in a new poll of likely Iowa voters, a complete flip of the candidate's projected performance in the state from earlier this year. Harris holds a 47% to 44% edge over Donald Trump in the new poll from the Des Moines Register

That's the inverse of the way the candidates polled in the state in September, where Trump held a four-point lead over Harris. And it's an astonishing change from polls while President Joe Biden was in the race. The last poll of a Biden-Trump matchup gave Trump an 18-point lead over the president and the state has largely been taken for granted by both campaigns as an easy GOP win.

While the poll's latest results are essentially a toss-up — Harris' margin of victory falls within the poll's margin of error— it's still an encouraging sign for a Harris campaign that expected to be gutting out votes in key swing states with impossible-to-call polling.

“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” pollster J. Ann Selzer told the Register. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.” 

Harris won women in Iowa by 20 percentage points and independents have fallen into the Harris camp by a 46% to 39%. The poll of 808 likely voters also found that Harris has a startling lead among voters of 65, with 55% of respondents throwing in for the vice president to just 36% for Trump.


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