An increasing amount of polls are including a matchup between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for 2024, and they're showing Trump with an edge. This includes in Iowa, as evidenced by a poll conducted by Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa. According to the poll, Trump has an 11-point edge among likely voters in the state, winning a hypothetical matchup 51 percent to Biden's 40 percent.
A write-up from Brianne Pfannenstiel and Stephen Gruber-Miller for the Des Moines Register notes that Trump won the state by 53 to 45 percent, with an 8-point edge. While Trump has lost some of that support, if we go by these numbers, the president has lost even more so.
Particularly telling is how Trump has support with independents:
Trump’s 2024 lead among likely Iowa voters appears to be driven by support among independents.
Biden wins support among 95% of Democrats — slightly better than the 91% Trump earns among Republicans. But independents favor Trump by 8 percentage points, 45% to 37%.
Another factor that's on Trump's side is that more Iowa Republicans are likely to turn out. In a subsection titled "Republican-leaning groups more likely to say they’ll definitely vote in 2024," Pfannenstiel and Gruber-Miller write:
The survey also offered a “striking” gap among those who say they will definitely vote in 2024, [pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co] said, and an early warning for Democrats that the party's base may be inclined to stay home.
“That’s a little bit of a tarot card, if you will, of what may be developing in terms of the election,” Selzer said.
She noted that 86% of Republicans say they will definitely vote in 2024, compared to 81% of Democrats and 76% of independents.
Rural dwellers, who tend to support Republicans, also are more likely to say they’ll definitely vote in 2024. Eighty-six percent say they would, compared to 76% of city dwellers, who tend to support Democrats.
Those who say they have no religious affiliation — typically the most left-leaning group in any Iowa Poll — are less likely than other other [sic] groups to say they will definitely vote. They come in 17 percentage points below the overall average, with 62% saying they will definitely vote in 2024.
As the write-up called to mind, President Biden fares particularly poorly among Iowa voters. A Des Moines poll from September showed that 31 percent of voters approve, while 62 percent disapprove.
The poll made a lot of headlines in September, with CNN's Chris Cillizza warning that "This poll should terrify Democrats ahead of 2022."
While the president's approval rating has technically has increased to 33 percent, that's not by much. And whoever thought that 33 percent would be an improvement? Sixty two percent still disapprove.
"This is not a good approval rating by any definition," pollster Seltzer said.
This latest poll was conducted November 7-10 with 810 Iowans, including 658 likely voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 p ercentage points.
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