A new poll released Monday shows former President Donald Trump with a commanding 18-point lead in Iowa – which as recently as four years ago was considered a contested battleground state.
Renowned Iowa pollster Ann Selzer conducted the survey of likely voters from June 9 to June 14.
Political observers widely consider the Des Moines-based Selzer one of the most accurate election pollsters. The Des Moines Register noted last November that her polling firm “is one of only four [to earn] an A+ out of nearly 500 rated by” polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
Selzer’s new poll of the 2024 election found Trump ahead with 50% of the vote and Biden lagging far behind at 32%.
The Register reported Monday that “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who says he has qualified for Iowa’s presidential ballot, earns 9%” in Selzer’s poll. “Another 2% of likely Iowa voters pick Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver, 3% say they would vote for someone else, 1% would not vote and 3% are not sure.”
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The Register article noted that the stunning results come “[t]wo weeks after [Trump] was convicted in a New York courtroom of multiple felony counts” – showing that the recent guilty verdict against Trump has not swayed Iowa voters from supporting him.
Moreover, results from another of the poll’s questions suggest that instead of focusing on Trump’s recent conviction as Democrats had hoped, Iowa voters may be paying more attention to Biden’s job performance.
Selzer’s poll found that a staggering two-thirds of Iowa voters disapprove of Biden. Only 28% indicated that they approved of the president.
An elections analyst on X (formerly Twitter) pointed out that, according to Selzer’s poll, the youngest cohort of Iowa voters were far more likely to disapprove of Biden than the electorate as a whole.
Among likely Iowa voters between the ages of 18 and 34, 76% – over three-quarters – said they disapproved of Biden, compared to only 15% who said they approved of him.
This finding is consistent with previous polls that show young voters souring on Biden en mass, despite the fact that they largely supported him just four years ago.
X user Avinash Kunnath reflected on the results of the Iowa poll.
“I’ve been mentally preparing for a second Trump term for months and this is the red blaring alarm,” Kunnath wrote. “The Ann Selzer Iowa poll is the gold standard of polls and has been dead on in nearly every election. This is a ten point GOP shift from 2020. We’d be in landslide territory.”
Kunnath noted that in Selzer’s June 2020 Iowa poll, Trump only led Biden by one point. Trump ended up winning the state by eight points just five months later.
“But it’s clear the majority of Americans are at the moment ready to reject the incumbent for the insurrectionist,” Kunnath wrote. “It’s sad out here.”
“There are four or five polls that everyone in DC takes seriously and Selzer is close to the top,” he wrote, responding to another user.
In another reply, Kunnath noted that a ten-point shift to Republicans nationwide means Trump “could win Minnesota, New Mexico,” and “Virginia, with the likelihood of a GOP majority House and Senate increasing substantially.”
As CatholicVote reported last week, the Cook Political Report “moved the states of Virginia and New Mexico from ‘Solid Democrat’ to ‘Likely Democrat’ in its assessment of likely 2024 election results.”
Biden’s recent dismal polling results among black and Hispanic voters are likely the chief reasons the two states are now in play for Trump.
Last month, a poll of likely voters in Nevada found Trump with a 13-point lead over Biden, who narrowly won the state four years ago. About one-fifth of Nevada voters are Hispanic.
During both of his prior two presidential runs, Trump carried Iowa by high single digits. He won the state by nine points in 2016 and a slightly reduced eight points in 2020.
However, the state voted for the Democratic nominee in six of the previous seven presidential elections.Barack Obama won Iowa by six points in 2012, and just shy of 10 points in 2008.
George W. Bush narrowly carried the state during his successful reelection bid in 2004 by 0.7%. Bush lost the state to Al Gore four years earlier by an even narrower 0.3% margin.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
