Vice President Kamala Harris has a narrow edge over former President Donald Trump in the final Des Moines Register poll of Iowa, a shocking result showing her with a lead in a state expected to be firmly in Trump’s corner.
The poll, sponsored by the Des Moines Register and conducted by J. Ann Selzer, nailed the final results of the presidential race in Iowa in both 2016 and 2020. While Iowa is no longer considered a swing state and rewards only six electoral voters, the Register survey remains closely watched as an indicator of how white voters across the Midwest may vote.
The poll found Harris earning 47% of the vote to 44% for Trump.
“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” Selzer told the newspaper. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.”
Selzer and the Register surveyed 808 likely Iowa voters from Oct. 28 to Oct. 31. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
Harris’ lead in the poll is the result of a massive gender gap. She leads by 20 points among women, 56% to 36%. Trump has a lead among men, but it’s relatively smaller, 52% to 38%. It’s a pattern that’s repeated itself to varying extents nationwide, but notably, a six-week abortion ban went into effect in Iowa this summer.
While the poll is highly respected, it is also an outlier. Iowa has seen little polling so far this cycle, but an Emerson College survey released Saturday showed Trump with a 53% to 43% lead, and a September poll from Cygnal sponsored by a conservative group found Trump with a 51% to 43% lead.
The last iteration of the Des Moines Register poll, from September, found Trump leading Harris, 47% to 43%.
Selzer’s track record in Iowa is nearly spotless, with only a miss in the 2018 gubernatorial contest. She nailed the Republicans’ margin of victory in the 2022 Senate race, the 2020 presidential race, 2016 presidential race and 2014 Senate race and the margin of President Barack Obama’s victory in the state in 2012. Often, her results broke from the polling consensus and turned out to be correct.