Saturday’s Iowa Selzer poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa 47-44 isn’t the only poll suggesting that something big is happening in our country.
Donald Trump won Iowa in 2020 by an 8-point margin. If Selzer’s numbers hold up, it would make an 11-point swing toward Harris in the state.
In Kansas, the Kansas Speak poll by the Docking Institute at Fort Hays State University found Trump winning the state by a meager 5-point margin, 48-43. Trump won the state in 2020 by 15. If the poll is right, it would mark a 10-point shift, similar to Iowa.
For reference, in 2020 the poll predicted a 14.4% Trump victory. He won the state by 14.6%.
And Sienna recently polled Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District for The New York Times, finding Harris beating Trump 54-42, or 12 points. Nebraska allocates a single electoral vote to the winner of each of the state’s three congressional districts, and Joe Biden won it 52-46 in 2020. If the Times is right, that’s a 6-point shift to the left in yet another midwestern rural-ish district.
There is something happening in rural America, in exactly the kind of districts that Trump and Republicans are depending as the foundation of their electoral chances.
And it all comes down to women.
“Independent voters, who had consistently supported Trump in the leadup to this election, now break for Harris. That’s driven by the strength of independent women, who back Harris by a 28-point margin, while independent men support Trump, but by a smaller margin,” the Des Moines Register reported, digging into the Selzer poll’s crosstabs. “Similarly, senior voters who are 65 and older favor Harris. But senior women support her by a more than 2-to-1 margin, 63% to 28%, while senior men favor her by just 2 percentage points, 47% to 45%.”
Those Kansas and Nebraska results only make sense if that same dynamic is playing out in the broader midwest.
And if it is? Look out, because this election will look a lot different than everyone has been assuming thus far.
