US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has taken a 3-point lead over her opponent, former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump, in the typically Republican-leaning state of Iowa, according to a new poll released on Saturday.
The Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll shows Harris leading Trump with 47 percent of likely Iowa voters supporting her, compared to 44 percent for Trump. This marks a shift from Trump’s previous victories in the state in both 2016 and 2020, though the results fall just within the survey’s margin of error.
In September, the poll had Trump ahead of Harris by 4 points.
Harris holds a strong lead among independent women, outpacing Trump by 28 points with 57 percent support to his 29 percent, while Trump leads among independent men by 10 points, 47 percent to 37 percent, the poll found.
Among senior voters, Harris also has an edge. She leads Trump by 35 points among senior women, with 63 percent to his 28 percent, though her lead narrows to 47 percent to Trump’s 45 percent among senior men.
Approximately 91 percent of those polled indicated they were firm in their decision for the upcoming election.
Trump’s campaign issued a statement saying that the Des Moines Register poll is a clear outlier, noting that an Emerson College poll released on Saturday far more closely reflects the state of the actual Iowa electorate and does so with far more transparency in their methodology.
It noted that the Emerson College poll concurs with CNN exit polls from 2020, when Trump won Iowa.
“Unlike Emerson which transparently reports its share of partisans and the 2020 vote recall, Des Moines Register does NOT disclose the distribution of this information, even though they asked it in their survey,” the Trump campaign stated.
It noted that Emerson College reports Trump leading strongly 93-7 among Republicans, while getting 8% of Democrats to Harris's 92%. Trump solidly leads among independents 55-42.