Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a “When We Vote, We Win” campaign event at the Craig Ranch Amphitheater on October 31, 2024 in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump 47% to 44% in Iowa, according to a shocking new poll released Saturday evening, just three days before Election Day.
Harris' lead is within the poll's margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, but her lead reflects a seven-point swing in voters' favor since September.
The results of the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll came as a complete surprise to political observers, as no serious analyst predicted that the Democratic candidate would defeat Trump in the state.
Since the conclusion of the presidential primary, neither candidate had campaigned in the state, which Trump won easily in the last two presidential elections.
“No one can say they saw this coming,” pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co, told the Des Moines Register.
“She has clearly made the leap into a leadership position.”
Selzer & Co. conducted the poll of 808 likely Iowa voters Monday through Thursday. Selzer's company is well-respected by pollsters, and its results tend to carry a lot of weight with political strategists.
Harris' lead in the poll was based on strong support from female voters, particularly older and politically independent voters.
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“Age and gender are the two most dynamic factors that explain these numbers,” Selzer told the Register.
The poll found that 3% of respondents supported independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ended his campaign to support Trump. Kennedy remains on the Iowa ballot.
The same poll in September showed Trump leading Harris, the current vice president, by 4 percentage points. Trump was 18 percentage points ahead of President Joe Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee, in June.
Trump won the state by 8 percentage points in 2020 and by 9 percentage points in 2016.
The Republican campaign released a memo Saturday evening calling the poll an “outlier.”
The memo said the new Emerson College poll of likely Iowa voters released Saturday showed Trump leading Harris 53% to 43%.
The Trump campaign memo said: “Des Moines Register is a clear outlier poll. Emerson College’s release today “far better reflects the state of the real Iowa electorate and does so with far more transparency in its methodology.”
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