Harris takes narrow lead over Trump in final Iowa poll before 2024 election • Daily Montanan

Vice President Kamala Harris has recently opened up a small lead over former President Donald Trump Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Survey published Saturday, just days before the Nov. 5 election.

The results are a surprising development for the state, which has largely been written off as an easy victory for Trump. He won Iowa in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The latest Iowa poll showed Harris leading with 47% of likely voters and Trump with 44%, the Register reported.

The poll, conducted from October 28 to 31 by Selzer & Co. with responses from 808 likely Iowa voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Women and independents are shifting to Harris

The biggest shift toward support for Harris has been Iowa women — especially women who identify as independent voters and women 65 and older, the Register reported. More independent, likely voters as a whole now support Harris at 46% versus Trump at 39%, despite the demographic group favoring Trump in every previous Iowa poll.

Independent women favored Harris in the September poll, with 40% supporting her and 35% supporting Trump. That lead grew in the latest poll to 57% of independent women supporting Harris and 29% supporting Trump.

More independent men still prefer Trump over Harris, by a percentage of 47% to 37%.

While voters 65 and older are also likely to support Harris as a demographic group, 63% of senior women support the vice president, compared to 28% who support Trump – a more than 2-to-1 margin. Senior men also support Harris, but by a margin of 2 percentage points from 47% to 45%.

Iowa Republicans have hated Trump in swing states

Iowa Republicans spent time during their campaign to touting Trump’s popularity in the state and expectations that the former president will win Iowa for a third straight election – U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst and U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, Iowa Republicans, have traveled to swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia to rally voters in recent weeks, with Ernst saying Iowa was “in the bag” for Trump.

Although both Harris and Trump have spent most of their time in key swing states ahead of the election, Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Rita Hart told reporters on Saturday that the poll results show Iowa to be a winnable state is for the Democrats in the coming elections.

“We worked hard and it’s paying off,” Hart said. “We’ve educated our constituents, recruited volunteers, listened to the concerns of friends and neighbors, and we recognize that Iowans are looking for better leadership. The fact that Vice President Harris now leads Donald Trump in the latest Des Moines Register poll is obviously very exciting for us.”

Iowa Republican chairman calls poll ‘outlier’

But Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, disputed the accuracy of the results and compared the results of the Des Moines Register survey with those of Emerson College earlier Saturday which showed Trump with 53% ahead of Harris with 43%.

“The Des Moines Register is a clear outlier,” Kaufmann said in a statement. “Emerson College, released today, much more closely reflects the state of the actual electorate in Iowa and does so with much more transparency in their methodology.”

The Trump campaign made similar comments in a response late Saturday. It brought a memo signed by the pollster, Tony Fabrizio of Fabrizio Lee & Associates, and the chief data consultant, Tim Saler, late Saturday, comparing the Register poll to the Emerson poll. The memo argued that the Register poll was an “outlier” and that the Emerson poll better reflected the electorate based on party registration, absentee voting results by party, exit polls and the 2020 election results.

House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst argued that the Iowa Poll is highly respected and should not be dismissed just because it does not produce favorable results for one party.

“I’ve been in their shoes on a Saturday night before Election Day, where the Iowa poll results are being announced, and they don’t look the way we would like them to be,” Konfrst said. “And they can’t believe Ann Seltzer, one of the country’s gold standard pollsters, in 2020 and not in 2024.”

The poll also showed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate who remains on the ballot in Iowa despite ending his campaign, still has the support of 3% of likely voters. Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver earned less than 1% in the poll. Another 1% of respondents said they would vote for someone else, 3% responded that they were unsure who to support and 2% said they did not want to reveal who they supported.

Although the poll showed Harris in a favorable position on Tuesday, Hart said it was important to note that the Iowa Poll results are not Election Day results. Konfrst said the poll is a welcome boost that gives “energy, enthusiasm and momentum” to Democratic voters and organizers ahead of Tuesday.

“We still have three days before this election, so remember: this is just a poll, and what really matters is that Iowans show up and make their voices heard,” Hart said.

Democrats say polls support the argument for more national aid

In the final days before the election, Konfrst said she and other Democrats are having conversations about the poll with the national party and supporting Democratic organizations, hoping to gain support and surrogate visits before Election Day.

“We’re going to ask as many people as possible to be surrogates here, but ultimately we know it’s the hard work of volunteers, our candidates up and down the ballot, the candidates for Congress and the party and all of our partners here in Iowa who do that hard work,” Konfrst said. “And so, surrogate or not, we think we’ll have a better night than expected for Kamala Harris and the Democrats on Tuesday.”

Hart also said Iowa’s decision in the 2024 presidential election could have major implications for the future of the Iowa Democratic caucuses. Iowa was ousted from its first seat in the nation in the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination cycle and announced mail-in caucus results on Super Tuesday in support of Biden this year. The nominating calendar will be up for debate again heading into 2028, and Hart said the Nov. 5 results will have a crucial impact on Iowa Democrats’ argument for returning to early statehood in future elections.

“Once this election is over, we will have this conversation,” Hart said. “And the better we do here in November, the better we can advocate.” … The bottom line is, I hope this shows the rest of the country that Iowa is a good barometer for choosing good leadership.”

This story was originally produced by the Iowa Capital Shipping which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network including the Daily Montanan, supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.