À quelques jours de l’élection, un nouveau sondage de l’un des sondeurs les plus fiables des États-Unis révèle que la candidate démocrate à la présidence, Kamala Harris, devance son concurrent républicain, Donald Trump, de trois points dans l’Iowa. Réalisé par Selzer & Co. pour le Des Moines Register et Mediacom, le sondage montre 47 % de soutien pour Harris contre 44 % pour Trump. Des analystes soulignent un mouvement favorable vers Harris, notamment parmi les femmes et les électeurs indépendants. Cependant, la campagne Trump rejette ces résultats, les qualifiant d’« aberration ».
With the election just around the corner, a recent poll from one of the most reputable polling firms in the U.S. shows Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris leading her Republican opponent Donald Trump by three points in traditionally conservative Iowa.
This poll, carried out by Selzer & Co. for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom, was made public on Saturday. Notably, polling analyst Nate Silver described the results as ‘shocking’ and commended the firm for its boldness in publishing them.
‘[Ann Selzer, the head of Selzer & Co.] has a strong record of defying the norm and being correct,’ Silver remarked on his blog, Silver Bulletin. ‘In an environment where many pollsters are facing criticism, she is regarded almost as an oracle.’
This survey interviewed 808 likely voters in Iowa between October 28 and 31, with a margin of error of 3.4 points. Among those surveyed, 47 percent backed Vice President Harris, while 44 percent expressed support for former President Trump.
Harris appears to be gaining significant traction, particularly among female voters and the elderly in Iowa. According to the Des Moines Register, Harris maintains a 20-point advantage among women (56 percent to 36 percent) and a remarkable 63 to 28 lead among women aged 65 and over.
There’s also evidence of a shift among independent voters, with independent women favoring Harris by 28 points, although independent men lean toward Trump, albeit by a smaller margin.
Silver’s polling aggregator model was adjusted to reflect Harris at 45.4 and Trump at 48.8 (indicating a 3.4-point lead for Trump). Prior to this poll, Harris’s chances of winning Iowa were estimated at 9 percent, but that figure nearly doubled to 17 percent afterward.
The aggregator FiveThirtyEight assigns Trump a 93 percent likelihood of winning Iowa, while Harris’s probability sits at 7 percent.
Silver considers Selzer & Co. one of the top two polling firms in the country, while FiveThirtyEight ranks Selzer 12th out of 282 based on its track record and methodologies.
After the poll’s release, odds on the betting market website Polymarket shifted toward Harris, decreasing from a 96 percent chance of Trump winning on Friday to an 80 percent chance by Sunday.
The results mark a notable change from prior Iowa polls, including Selzer’s June survey, which had Trump leading by 18 points against President Joe Biden, then the expected Democratic candidate.
By September, Trump’s advantage had diminished to 4 points against Harris, before the trend reversed in her favor this month.
Silver identified Selzer as a ‘maverick’ for disclosing this poll, as many other pollsters tend to group together with results that are tightly aligned. He remarked, ‘If you had to bet, this time Selzer is probably set to be incorrect,’ noting that alternative polls still indicate a Trump lead, including one from Emerson College released on the same day, which showed Trump ahead by 9 points, securing 54 percent against Harris’s 45.
The Trump campaign quickly dismissed the findings of Selzer’s poll, labeling them an ‘outlier’ in a memo distributed shortly after the poll’s publication.
The campaign’s chief pollster, Tony Fabrizio, highlighted the Emerson College poll, arguing that it more accurately represents the electorate in Iowa, especially in light of party registration trends leaning Republican since 2020 and the consistency of Emerson’s results with past exit polls.
‘Unlike Emerson, which transparently shares its partisan breakdown and 2020 vote recall, the Des Moines Register does NOT disclose the distribution of this data, even though they did inquire about it in their survey,’ Fabrizio stated.
Former pollster Adam Carlson shared Fabrizio’s memo on X Saturday, commenting, ‘This is definitely something a campaign that’s not in panic mode would issue.’
Trump won Iowa by margins of 9.5 points in 2016 and 8.2 points in 2020.
À quelques jours de l’élection, un nouveau sondage d’un des plus fiables sondeurs américains montre la candidate démocrate à la présidence, Kamala Harris, en tête de son rival républicain Donald Trump de trois points dans l’Iowa, un État traditionnellement conservateur.
Ce sondage, réalisé par Selzer & Co. pour le Des Moines Register et Med