US Election 2024 live updates: Shock new poll gives Harris lead over Trump in Iowa as it shifts from Red to Blue

By : Oliver O’Connell and Rhian Lubin

Highlights

• Democrat Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in Iowa 47% to 44%, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows.
• A victory for Harris would be a shocking development after Iowa has swung aggressively to the right in recent elections, delivering Trump solid victories in 2016 and 2020.
• The poll shows that women are driving the late shift toward Harris.
• Trump continues to lead with his core base of support: men, evangelicals, rural residents, and those without higher education or a college degree.
• Iowa has 6 electoral votes and in a tight race the shift from Red to blue could be devastating for Trump

Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump in Iowa — a startling reversal for Democrats and Republicans who have all but written off the state’s presidential contest as a certain Trump victory.  

A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows Vice President Harris leading former President Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters just days before a high-stakes election that appears deadlocked in key battleground states.  

The results follow a September Iowa Poll that showed Trump with a 4-point lead over Harris and a June Iowa Poll showing him with an 18-point lead over Democratic President Joe Biden, who was the presumed Democratic nominee at the time.  

“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.” 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has abandoned his independent presidential campaign to support Trump but remains on the Iowa ballot, gets 3% of the vote. That’s down from 6% in September and 9% in June.  

Fewer than 1% say they would vote for Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver, 1% would vote for someone else, 3% aren’t sure and 2% don’t want to say for whom they already cast a ballot.  

Earlier today, the former president said that “women have to be protected when they’re at home in suburbia” as he attempted to double down on his previous comment that he’d protect them “whether they like it or not.”

Some 70 million Americans have already voted early according to data gathered by CNN. Both candidates spent Saturday in North Carolina as the focus on key battlegrounds with just days left before the election.

Des Moines Register