According to the Bombshell poll in Iowa, Harris has a lead over Trump, even though he has won twice

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Kamala Harris has surpassed Donald Trump in a new poll in Iowa, a state Trump won easily in 2016 and 2020, a new poll shows.

Women and older voters are responsible for the remarkable turnaround in the Selzer poll, conducted for the Des Moines Register newspaper and published Saturday. Trump’s campaign criticized the findings, citing a new poll on the same day that gives the Republican a 10-point lead in the same state.

The Selzer poll of 808 likely voters polled between Oct. 28 and 31 shows Harris leading Trump 47%-44% in a state that has trended deeply Republican in recent years. It is within the margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, but it marked a reversal from the September Iowa poll that gave Trump a four-point lead, the newspaper reported.

“The poll shows that women, especially those who are older or politically independent, are driving the late shift toward Harris,” the Register said. The two candidates’ starkly different positions on abortion likely were a factor in the respected pollster’s unexpected numbers.

Selzer has a history of predicting accurate results in presidential and Senate races, with the figures below showing the polls versus the outcome over the past twelve years.

Trump won Iowa in his past two presidential campaigns by more than 9 percentage points in 2016 and 8 points in 2020.

“It’s hard for anyone to say they saw this coming,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. “She has clearly achieved a leadership position.

“Age and gender are the two most dynamic factors explaining these numbers.”

The Trump campaign released a memo from its chief pollster and top data consultant calling the Des Moines Register poll “a clear outlier” and saying that an Emerson College poll — also released Saturday — showed the state of the better reflected the electorate in Iowa.

The Emerson College Polling/RealClearDefense survey of a similar number of likely voters on November 1 and 2 had a very different result, with Trump leading Harris by 10 points. This poll also has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. The Emerson College survey found that Trump had a strong lead over Harris among men and independents, while Harris performed well among those under 30.

And Jeff Kaufman, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, lashed out at the poll, the pollster and the newspaper after it was published.”

The @DMRegister and @jaselzer just lost every bit of credibility they had left,” Kaufman tweeted on Saturday.

“This should be classified as spreading propaganda with these types of polls. It’s sad to see how far they have fallen. President Trump will win Iowa.”

Just a few hours earlier, Kaufman had tweeted that the Selzer Poll would say, “Trump is on track to beat Harris by at least eight points in Iowa so they can protect their reputation just before Election Day.”

Nationally, Harris and Trump are locked in a tight race for the White House, with the election well underway ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.

Whoever wins Iowa will get six Electoral College votes, 270 of which are needed to capture the White House.

Both parties have focused their efforts in the final days of their campaigns on “battleground states” such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Reuters contributed to this report