Iowa poll fires up Harris' campaign as race goes down to the wire

Her team hopes sentiment bubbling there will be mirrored in key Midwest states

- Bhagyashree Garekar

A state in which Vice-President Kamala Harris has never campaigned, and where former president Donald Trump was assumed to be a clear victor, is lighting up her hopes as the last votes are cast in the tight Nov 5 US presidential election.

At this late stage in the campaign, with 77 million votes already cast, both candidates have crammed in multiple rallies to drive up turnout in the handful of states that will decide the election.

Iowa, a relatively small state, is not one of them.

But the Harris campaign is hoping that the sentiment bubbling there will be replicated in the three critical states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which are also part of the same Midwestern region.

If these three do go in her favour, there is almost no doubt that Ms Harris will be seated in the Oval Office.

A Des Moines Register/ Mediacom Iowa Poll released over the weekend showed her marginally leading Trump by 3 percentage points among likely voters.

"It's hard for anybody to say they saw this coming," said Ms Ann Selzer, who led the poll, in interviews with US media. "She has clearly leaped into a leading position." Trump won Iowa by more than 8 percentage points in 2020, and the Republicans have held the state over the past decade.

If there is an upset in Iowa, it would be propelled by women voters who are backing Ms Harris by a margin of 20 points, according to Ms Selzer's survey.