Final polling before election, including in Iowa of all places, paints uncertain picture

The final round of polling ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election continued to show an incredibly close race across seven battleground states — but also included a shocker out of the solidly red Midwest state of Iowa.

The political world was abuzz this weekend after the latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, from respected pollster J. Ann Selzer, showed Vice President Kamala Harris winning the support of 47% of likely voters in the state, compared to 44% for former President Trump.

The same poll had Trump with a 4-point lead over Harris in September, and an 18-point lead over President Biden in June.

A final set of polls out Sunday from The New York Times and Siena College, meanwhile, showed Harris and Trump within striking distance of each other — even within the polls’ margin of sampling error as to who is ahead — in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Iowa Poll added to widespread hand-wringing over the degree to which polling this cycle is accurately reflecting public sentiment, or missing important trends. Several experts said they still expect Trump to win Iowa, but that there were important takeaways in the Iowa Poll findings that could bode well for Harris if they hold up across the Blue Wall swing states — including greater-than-expected support for her among white voters.

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The poll found women, including those who are older and politically independent, breaking hard toward Harris. Independent women backed Harris by a 28-point margin, the poll showed. Women aged 65 and older favored her by a 2-to-1 margin, 63% to 28%.

Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, called the Iowa Poll “one final polling curveball” that “just adds even more mystery” to a campaign where polling overall has failed to provide a consistent picture of where the American electorate stands in a monumental race.

“This one is really off the wall,” Kondik said of the Iowa Poll. “I don’t think Harris is going to win Iowa, but I do think it could be directionally picking up on something, and could be helpful in interpreting other places in the Midwest.”

Cornell Belcher, a pollster who worked for both Obama campaigns, said polls can’t predict who is going to win a race, but the Iowa Poll does provide a “signal in the noise” that Trump is “not closing strong” and is not capturing voters beyond his existing base — which won’t be enough for him to win an election with high voter turnout, as this one may have.

“Trump is not performing well, even in places where he should be performing well,” Belcher said. “Has he been able to grow beyond his ceiling? There is very little evidence out there.”

For his part, Trump blasted Selzer’s poll as unreliable in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

“No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump. In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT,” he wrote.

Selzer is highly respected nationally, and responded to Trump’s remarks by saying that the latest poll was conducted using the same methodology as was used in the last two presidential races, which both showed Trump winning the state, as he went on to do.

The polling comes as both Harris and Trump barnstorm across the swing states. Both candidates have cast this election as wildly important, and their opponent as a threat to America’s future — which has driven up anxiety among the electorate.

Harris recently held a rally on the National Mall near the place where Trump helped incite the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, warning he would threaten the nation’s security again were he to win. Over the weekend, she appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” where she tried to put a more humorous spin on the idea that Trump should be left in the past.

Trump, whose campaign has blamed Harris for inflation and poor border security, has also drawn attention for a string of bizarre and threatening remarks from the campaign trail, including toward his political rivals. At a rally in Milwaukee on Friday, he appeared to mime oral sex on a microphone. At a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, he suggested that if someone was going to take another shot at him, he wouldn’t mind if they did so through the section of news media in front of him.

Trump also repeated the lie that he won the 2020 election, and the baseless claim that Democrats are already cheating in this election.

Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped his own long-shot bid for the White House to back Trump, and who Trump has said he would bring into his administration to lead health initiatives, suggested another Trump administration would call for an end to fluoride in drinking water — which Trump said was “possible.” Fluoride protects teeth and its inclusion in small amounts in drinking water is considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

Belcher said Trump’s bizarre and at times racist antics on the trail — and his campaign’s intense focus on issues that don’t directly affect many Americans, such as transgender healthcare — are contributing to his poor or stagnant performance in recent polling.

“How is that really speaking to that suburban mom who didn’t vote for him last time, which was the problem?” Belcher said. “How does that make her vote for him this time?”

Belcher said he doesn’t see Trump building support beyond his base, and believes Harris is going to win thanks to large turnout that gives her the votes that are out of Trump’s reach. He is more concerned, he said, about political violence when Harris wins, because of Trump’s efforts to undermine trust in the election with baseless claims of voter fraud.

Kondik said Harris’ position “does seem a little bit better than it was a week or two ago,” and it will be interesting to see whether the trends highlighted by the Iowa Poll hold up nationally. Some other polling has suggested a similar shift in places such as Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio, he said, but the trend has not necessarily been showing up in swing state polling.

Kondik said his advice until all the votes are counted is for people to “treat the race as though it’s a toss up” — because that’s really the only thing polling has been showing.