Biden and Trump Tied in Key State of Iowa, Gender Divide Widest of All Time
Both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are statistically tied in the key Midwest state of Iowa, with both candidates currently polling at 47 percent.
Just weeks ahead of the November 3 election, and less than two weeks before early voting begins in Iowa October 5, 84 percent of Iowa voters say they have made up their minds. But support for both candidates had held steady for several months, with Trump only having led Biden 44 percent to 43 percent back in June. Only 4 percent of state voters say they are prepared to vote for a third-party option and 3 percent of Iowa's registered voters say they remain unsure who to vote for in the upcoming elections.
And according to the newest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, the state is seeing it's most pronounced gender divide between supporters of the two candidates.
Trump holds a 21 percent advantage over Biden among Iowa men, 57 to 36 percent. But Biden holds a 20 percent lead over Trump among women voters, 57 to 37 percent. This stark divide between men voting Republican and women voting Democrat is occurring in several other potential swing states including Texas, Florida and Michigan.
"I don't know that there's any race in the history of presidential polling in Iowa that shows this kind of division," said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., the firm that conducted the poll, in an interview with the Des Moines Register published Tuesday. "We've had two polls in a row putting it very, very close. I think all eyes will be on Iowa."
Trump carried Iowa four years ago by nine percentage points during the 2016 election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But now Biden has tightened the race to neck-and-neck along with several other states which the GOP candidate handily won in 2016.
Exit polling conducted by CNN found Trump carried Iowa's male voters, with nearly twice as many men voting for him over Clinton. And although Clinton carried the state's women voters, she did so by only seven percentage points—a much smaller margin than Biden's support in 2020. Among married women, Biden holds a seven percentage point lead, but among unmarried women, two-thirds are in support of the Democratic candidate over Trump. Biden also holds the support of a majority of white women without a college degree, 56 to 37 percent.
"If Biden wins, it's because women are steering the ship," Selzer told the local Des Moines newspaper Tuesday.
One registered Iowa voter, 64-year-old Marge Courtney of Eldon, Iowa, told the Register, "for the first time in my life, I'm just voting a straight Democratic ticket." She went on to note that she believes Republicans are running on a platform of "exclusion" against women, minorities and others outside the white male framework.
Newsweek reached out to both the Trump and Biden campaigns for reactions to the Iowa gender divide and latest poll numbers, but did not receive a reply before publication.
