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Just listen to Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican representative and member of the House Committee that investigated Jan. 6:
“If I was Trump, I would be FREAKING OUT right now. Nobody had Iowa on the radar!” he tweeted on Saturday night.
The cause? The Des Moines Register released its final presidential poll, which shows that Vice President Kamala Harris holds a 47%-44% lead over former president Donald Trump — in deeply red Iowa.
Author Lyz Lenz tweeted: “People want to know how Iowa could swing towards Harris, when the state has been solidly red for so long and let me tell you, as someone who lives here & writes about this state. It’s the abortion ban. Women are furious.”
If Harris is leading in Iowa, that likely indicates that her poll numbers are vastly underestimated in other states, including many of the battleground states — like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where she holds polling leads but only by a few points.
If the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll numbers are accurate, Harris likely is winning handily in at least a few of those states, and those numbers beg the question: Has she overtaken Trump in North Carolina and Georgia, too?
Will the election actually turn out to be a rout?
Here are the keys to the poll, according to the newspaper:
— 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 — particularly those who are older or are politically independent — are driving the late shift toward Harris.
— Trump continues to lead with his core base of support: men, evangelicals, rural residents and those without a college degree.
Matthew Klein, a political analyst, compared the Selzer polls and actual election results and concluded, “About as good as any pollster gets.”
Final Selzer poll findings (and the actual result)
2022 Senate: R+12 (R+12)
2020 President: R+7 (R+8)
2020 Senate: R+4 (R+7)
2018 Governor: D+2 (R+3)
2016 President: R+7 (R+9)
2014 Senate: R+7 (R+8)
2012 President: D+5 (D+6)
Despite what Kinzinger says, Iowa should have been on the radar. In September, NJ Advance Media reported a 14-point swing after Harris entered the race. In June, Trump led President Joe Biden by 18 points, but Harris has narrowed that margin to only four points by the fall. Trump won Iowa by eight points in the 2020 presidential election against Biden.
Still … “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 withdrew from the race to support Trump, remains on the Iowa ballot, but he gets only 3% of the vote. That’s down from 6% in September and 9% in June.
Former GOP campaign strategist Matthew Dowd tweeted about the poll’s usual accuracy: “… they were one of the first to catch [the] break for Trump in 2016 in last few days, and they caught over-polling of Biden in 2020. I have been saying for two months that polls weren’t capturing hidden Harris vote.”
Fernand Armandi, a Democratic activist, tweeted: “Ann Selzer just set off a pollster industrywide CYA earthquake that is going to be felt on Mars …”
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