A Des Moines Register poll showed Donald Trump with a 7-point lead over Joe Biden in Iowa, 48% to 41%, after the two were tied in the same series in September with 47% each.
The survey’s an outlier after several recent polls showed the Iowa race too close to call. Biden’s campaign has targeted the state aggressively with advertising. The survey of 814 likely voters was taken Oct. 26-29. It had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll, said while men are more likely to support Trump and women to support Biden, the gender gap has narrowed, and independents have returned to supporting the president, a group he won in 2016.
"The president is holding demographic groups that he won in Iowa four years ago, and that would give someone a certain level of comfort with their standing," she said. "There's a consistent story in 2020 to what happened in 2016."
But, added Selzer, “Neither candidate hits 50%, so there’s still some play here.”
Trump’s standing has improved among independent voters since September, while his support has slipped among women, according to the poll.
The Real Clear Politics average of recent Iowa polls, updated to include the Des Moines Register survey, shows Trump up by 0.5 points.
Trump carried Iowa by 9.4 percentage points in 2016, but his chances at a repeat 2020 win here appeared to be in doubt in recent polling. The June Iowa Poll showed Trump leading by just 1 percentage point before Biden climbed into the September tie.
Biden, though, does not appear to have given up on the state. He was in Des Moines Friday for a drive-in rally where he told voters: "I'll work as hard for those who don't support me as those who do. In my administration, there will be no red states or blue states, just the United States of America."
Trump was in Iowa earlier this month and has scheduled another rally in Dubuque on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Biden expanded his lead over Trump in Wisconsin over the last month, according to a new poll by Emerson College, their last one before Tuesday’s election.
The Wisconsin Emerson College poll, conducted Oct. 29-30, had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. It showed Biden leading Trump 53% to 45%. Biden’s lead over Trump increased by 1 point from the same poll last month.
In the past week both candidates have campaigned in Wisconsin, which along with Michigan and Pennsylvania is seen as key to winning the White House. Trump won all three states in 2016, the first time a Republican candidate had managed to do so since 1984, and Biden will need to take some of them back to win.
Independent voters in Wisconsin favored Biden over Trump by 54% to 39%. While Biden has a 16-point lead among suburban voters in Wisconsin and a 17-point lead with urban voters, Trump holds an edge among rural voters, 52% to 45%. The economy ranked as the most important issue for voters, and Trump’s approval rating was at 45%.
In Vigo County, Indiana, whose voters have chosen the winning candidate in all but two presidential elections since 1888, it’s a dead heat. Biden and Trump each have 48% support. Indiana is usually a heavily Republican state; Trump won the county handily in 2016.
Trump is still deciding where to spend Election Night: attending a gathering at his downtown hotel in Washington, or staying home at the White House.
“I’ll be perhaps between the White House and the hotel,” the president told reporters Saturday morning as he prepared to board Air Force One en route to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for a noon rally, the first of four for the day.
Trump also predicted that he’ll do better than expected with Black and Hispanic voters. “We have a big red wave that has formed,” he said.
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