What the shocking new Iowa poll means for Kamala Harris is Nate Silver

Just days before the election, a new poll from one of America's most trusted pollsters showed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris leading her Republican rival Donald Trump by three points in deep-red Iowa.

The new survey, conducted by Selzer & Co. for Des Moines Register and Mediacom was released on Saturday, prompting poll analyst Nate Silver to write a quick analysis in which he called the poll “shocking” and said it took “courage” to release it.

“(Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co.) has a long history of defying conventional wisdom and being right,” Silver wrote on his blog Silver Bulletin. “In a world where most pollsters have a lot of egg on their faces, she has almost oracle status.”

This poll polled 808 likely Iowa voters between October 28th and 31st. The error rate was 3.4 points. Of those surveyed, 47 percent supported Vice President Harris and 44 percent supported former President Trump.

Newsweek emailed Harris and Trump's campaigns seeking comment.

For Harris, the poll reflects strong momentum among women and older voters in Iowa. The Des Moines Register reported that Harris had a 20-point lead among women (56 to 36 percent) and a notable 63 to 28 lead among women 65 and older.

Independent voters also appeared to agree with Harris: Independent women preferred Harris by 28 points, while independent men preferred Trump by a smaller margin.

Selzer's poll shifted Silver's poll aggregator model to Harris 45.4 and Trump 48.8 (giving Trump a 3.4 point lead). Before the poll, Silver's model had given Harris a 9 percent chance of winning Iowa, but afterward that probability nearly doubled to 17 percent.

Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight gives Trump a 93 percent chance of winning Iowa and Harris a 7 percent chance.

Silver ranks Selzer & Co. among the top two pollsters in America. FiveThirtyEight ranks the company at #12^Th Because of his track record and methodology, 282 pollsters were added to his list.

Betting market site Polymarket changed its odds in Harris' favor after the poll was released, dropping from a 96 percent chance of a Trump win on Friday to an 80 percent chance on Sunday.

The results represent a significant change from previous polls in Iowa, including Selzer's June poll, which had Trump leading President Joe Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee, by 18 points.

By September, that lead over Harris had shrunk to four points before turning in her favor this month.

Silver called Selzer an “outsider” for releasing the poll because he believes many other pollsters are “sticking together” by releasing results that are almost exactly the same.

“If one had to bet on the odds, Selzer would probably be wrong this time,” Silver wrote, pointing out that other polls still show Trump with a lead, including an Iowa poll conducted by Emerson College, also out Saturday was published and with Trump leading by 9 points, or 54 percent of the vote against Harris' 45.

The Trump campaign immediately rejected Selzer's poll results, calling her an “outlier” in a memo distributed hours after the poll was released.

Campaign chairman Tony Fabrizio pointed to the Emerson College poll, which he said “far better reflects” the Iowa electorate, especially given party registration trends favoring Republicans since 2020 and the consistency of Emerson's results with previous election polls.

“Unlike Emerson, which transparently reports its partisan share and 2020 election recall, Des Moines Register does NOT disclose the dissemination of this information, even though they asked for it in their survey,” Fabrizio said.

Former pollster Adam Carlson released Fabrizo's memo on Saturday, writing: “This is definitely something a non-panicked campaign would release.”

Trump led Iowa by 9.5 points in 2016 and by 8.2 points in 2020.