The Shock Iowa Poll—Like the Election at Large—Is About Abortion

On Election Day, when asked about abortion, Trump said, “Just stop talking about that.” But as a new Iowa poll from deep-red Iowa proves, it's been the defining issue of the election.

By Kylie Cheung | November 5, 2024 | 4:16pm

Photo: Getty Images Abortion Politics 2024 Election

The Shock Iowa Poll—Like the Election at Large—Is About Abortion

Over the weekend, the Des Moines Register’s long-time, legendary pollster, J. Ann Selzer, put Democratic nominee Kamala Harris three points ahead of Donald Trump in the deep-red state of Iowa. Previously, in September, Trump held a four-point lead over Harris, and before that, in June, Trump held an 18-point lead over President Biden. Selzer, sometimes called the “Outlier Queen,” is rarely wrong, even when her pre-election polls often break with the mainstream—as they did when she predicted Trump’s 2016 victory and Barack Obama’s victory during the 2008 Democratic caucus. It’s still anyone’s guess how Election Day will go, but it’s fair to say Selzer’s final poll bodes… not great for Trump!

And there’s a key, driving force behind this seismic, potentially election-deciding shift: Iowa’s six-week abortion ban, which the state Supreme Court approved at the end of June, and consequently took effect at the end of July. Selzer’s poll showed that women ages 65 and older—which is a securely Republican demographic—supported Harris over Trump by a 63 to 28% margin. Women overall favored Harris by 20 points, while men favored Trump by four points. “You need to win with women more than you lose with men, and we’re seeing that in these data,” Selzer told The Bulwark podcast this week.

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Iowa is, in some ways, a microcosm for the election writ large. This summer, Iowa became the 18th state to enact a total or near total ban on abortion; the ripple effect was massive and immediate, driving a surge in out-of-state abortion travel and new, massive costs for the state’s abortion funds as well as abortion funds in nearby states.

All of this is to say that abortion has been the issue of this election—the first presidential election since the Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade in 2022—and it’s certainly a driving issue among the suburban women voters who pollsters say could ultimately decide Tuesday’s outcome. In August, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to claim that suburban women care about “normal things” like the economy, not abortion. (Abortion, of course, is an economic issue.) Meanwhile, Bernie Moreno, the GOP nominee for Senate in Ohio, mocked women—particularly women over 50—for being “crazy” for worrying about abortion rights. He reasoned that, at their age, abortion “isn’t an issue for you.” But clearly, age didn’t stop Iowa women from caring about abortion.

Last week, ProPublica reported the third and fourth confirmed abortion ban-induced deaths since 2022, both in Texas. One of them was an 18-year-old who was denied life-saving, emergency abortion care by several hospitals and died as a result. The other was a young immigrant woman and mother to a one-year-old daughter, who died from sepsis after a hospital waited 40 hours before they performed an emergency abortion to complete her miscarriage. These are the realities that Trump, who’s expressed support for states tracking people’s pregnancies to enforce abortion bans, could create on the national level.

On Election Day, after Trump cast his ballot in Florida, reporters asked how he voted on Amendment 4, Florida’s ballot measure to enshrine a right to abortion. For the last six months, the state has enforced a six-week abortion ban, which decimated access to the procedure across the entire South. In response to these questions, Trump said, “Just stop talking about that.” But as Selzer’s Iowa poll shows, “that”—no longer talking about abortion—is… impossible. Both in general and in the context of this election.

Under Trump’s state abortion bans, women are dying, c riminal charges for pregnancy are on the rise, and Republicans are increasingly threatening IVF and birth control, conflating both with abortion. This is what’s at stake. And if voters in the deep-red state of Iowa recognize this, it seems likely (fingers crossed) that voters elsewhere do, too.