Political observers received an unexpected shock Saturday evening when the game’s most respected pollster, Ann Selzer of Iowa, said: He published his last survey before the election — and showed Kamala Harris with a three-point lead over Iowa, a red state that supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The Des Moines Register poll result is a strong positive sign in Harris’ favor in the closing days of the 2024 campaign. Iowa women overwhelmingly support Harris.

In the same poll in September, Trump was ahead by 4 points.

“It’s hard to say that everyone saw this coming,” Selzer said.

The results show that independent women and older women gave Harris striking support; independent women support him by a 28-point margin, while older women support him by a 35-point margin.

As polarizing poll collector Nate Silver put it in a post on X, “That’s all I have planned for Saturday night.” He added: “It’s incredibly brave to publish this survey. This won’t put Harris ahead in our prediction because there was another Iowa poll today that was good for Trump. But I wouldn’t want to play poker against Ann Selzer.”

It is particularly notable this year when leading journalists focusing on the quantitative side of polling point to strong evidence of “poll herding” (the practice of weighting results in a way that disguises the fact that your poll may be an outlier compared to others). . The rationale behind doing this is to protect your reputation and avoid the kind of business hit a surveyor might receive if deemed untrustworthy.

Selzer has proven it time and time again over the years, even if most other pollsters in Iowa and elsewhere have missed it. If it proves accurate once again and Harris is somehow able to win in Iowa, it would likely be part of a broader victory, if not a major victory for Harris.

Social media users expressed great shock at the results on Saturday evening.