President Donald Trump could be facing a significant battle in winning Iowa this fall, according to new polling released on Monday. The Des Moines Register shared results of its latest in-state polling and it appears that there could be a very tight race between Trump and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden this fall.
The new numbers from the Des Moines Register /Mediacom Iowa Poll indicated that the state is essentially a toss-up between Trump and Biden right now. The poll has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points and was conducted from June 7 to 10.
During the 2016 presidential election, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points in Iowa. The new polling shows Trump at 44 percent compared to Biden at 43 percent.
As the publication noted, Iowa was perhaps not expected to be a battleground state for Trump in 2020. Given recent polling and trends, however, it looks as if Iowa and a handful of other similar states could be shifting toward Biden.
“I think it’s obviously nothing that Joe Biden should take for granted, because he’s not leading. But if the election were held today, Biden has a far better shot than anybody thought,” pollster J. Ann Selzer explained.
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In March, polling from the same source indicated that Trump had the support of 51 percent of those questioned. Biden had the general election support of 41 percent of likely voters in Iowa.
G. Elliott Morris of The Economist noted via Twitter that these results showing Biden one point behind Trump align fairly well with their own modeling. He noted that the results also signal that Biden is probably up about eight points over Trump nationally. In addition, he detailed that the Democratic candidate’s lead in Iowa might be even bigger now in comparison to the polling that is about a week old already.
This isn’t the first sign that Iowa could bring some interesting and notable results in the upcoming 2020 election. Republication Senator Joni Ernst is up for re-election and she will face off against Democratic nominee Theresa Greenfield. Recent polling showed that Greenfield was up over Ernst by three percentage points.
As 270 To Win notes, Iowa still currently leans toward Trump. However, the state is not always a guaranteed Republican win. For example, Iowa went for former President Barack Obama twice. George W. Bush won Iowa in 2004, but he narrowly lost the state to Al Gore in 2000.
The president and Vice President Mike Pence have both visited Iowa in recent weeks, and this new polling suggests that additional visits may well be added to their calendars in the upcoming months.
