Note: This appeared in the Life, Under Construction Newsletter on November 4, 2024. For subscription information, please click on the button below.
Become a subscriber!Is this Heaven? No, It’s an Iowa Poll
The Des Moines Register released a poll Saturday that shocked the pundits. The poll showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump in Iowa, 47% to 44%. Trump won Iowa in 2020 and 2016, and was widely considered likely to win Iowa’s electoral votes in 2024.
Newsweek summarized the poll:
The poll found women voters backing Harris by 56 percent to Trump’s 36 percent. Male voters showed a similar but inverse pattern, favoring Trump by 52 percent to Harris’ 38 percent.
The Selzer & Co. survey included 808 likely Iowa voters, both those who had already cast ballots and those who said they would definitely vote. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
Why might Iowa be swinging to Harris? Steve Kornacki of NBC News has a theory.
June: DMR poll has Trump +18 vs. Biden in Iowa
July 29: Iowa’s six-week abortion ban goes into effect with intense controversy and news coverage
September 22: DMR poll shows 59-37% opposition to new abortion law — 69% among women. Also shows Trump lead over Harris at just 47-43%
All fall: Saturation ad spending and campaigning on abortion by Dem candidates in the state’s two toss-up House races
Now: Final DMR poll has massive gender gap pushing Harris into 47-44% lead
In my last conversation with Steve Scaffidi on WTMJ, I said there might be a couple of states that surprise us. Iowa was one of the states I had in mind (along with Virginia and New Hampshire) because of former President Barack Obama’s victories in the state and 2008 and 2012.
If the poll is even partially correct, and it’s normally a very good poll, it indicates that other pollsters may be undercounting women voters. For example, the latest Marquette University Law School poll showed an evenly split state, but the polling sample was also evenly divided between women and men. Normally women vote more than men, although they didn’t in Wisconsin in 2020, which explains the bias of the Marquette Poll. However, this is the first presidential election after the Dobbs decision, so it would be reasonable to expect an even higher than normal turnout for women.
The poll also shows Trump is also only getting 89% of Republican voters in Iowa. That may be a function of the number of Republican voters in Iowa, or it may be the effect of “Never Trump” and Harris’ outreach to Republicans.
Even a 1-2% correction in other polls could mean a huge swing to Harris in the swing states.
