New polling from a conservative Great Plains state shows Vice President Kamala Harris running close to former President Donald Trump.
And ironically, one of Trump’s most high-profile supporters is to blame, according to a Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of 656 likely Iowa voters.
Harris is just 4 points behind the Republican nominee, 47% to 43%. That’s a remarkable narrowing of what was an 18-point race between Trump and President Biden back in June, especially given Republicans have a more than 110,000 registered-voter advantage among the state’s 1.46 million active voters.
But in a sign of how close the race is even in a place where Republicans control state government, independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. draws 6% support, exceeding the size of Trump’s lead and seemingly making the race look closer than it is.
Though Kennedy has worked to get off the ballot in some states, the Hawkeye State is not one of them. He announced in August he was running as the We the People candidate in Iowa, and September saw no change in that status.
“We’ve tried to get out of all the swing states,” he told NewsNation this month, though the Iowa poll suggests he might have missed at least one potential battleground.
Harris is outperforming her own personal favorability numbers here, with RFK serving as a sink for potential Trump voters.
Though she trails by 4 points in the election battle, she is 8 points underwater, with 43% approval and 51% disapproval.
The data suggest Harris is benefiting from energy that Trump isn’t matching.
Just 74% of Trump backers say they are extremely or very enthusiastic to vote in November, for instance; 80% of Harris partisans make the same claim.
And while only 84% of Trump supporters say their minds are made up, 89% of Harris’ backers profess an iron-clad commitment to their candidate.
The gender gap in play in most states recurs here. Trump is up by 27 points with men (59% to 32%); Harris is up 17 with women (53% to 36%) — and doing even better with suburban women, leading 69% to 27%.
Though most of the primary and caucus map saw little challenge to Trump during this cycle’s nomination process, Iowa was an exception, with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis running spirited campaigns.
Gov. Kim Reynolds backed DeSantis, leading Trump to denounce her “disloyalty” ahead of the caucus; she ended up endorsing Trump in March.
Yet these data indicate Trump’s problems in this poll have little to do with that highly charged period in state politics. He leads 41% to 36% with independents and has 94% support among Republicans.