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In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump carried Iowa by a comfortable nine percentage points over Hillary Clinton. While it wasn’t the defining victory of that election for Mr. Trump, (that would be perhaps Pennsylvania or Michigan) it was certainly an indicator of how effective the candidate’s populist messaging had been.
Donald Trump had identified a grievance the American people had with insider politics and what he described as “the swamp” of political influence in Washington DC. However, in 2020, his reelection chances have been tested by numerous crises. Chief among these is the coronavirus pandemic, which persists in spite of Trump’s efforts to contain and mitigate the damage.
The damage to Mr. Trump’s reelection chances can be seen clearly, then, in Iowa, once a comfortably Republican state. Despite 2016’s nine-point route, a recent poll shows Democrat Joe Biden leading President Trump by a slim margin of three percentage points. The poll’s margin of error was four points, so, even assuming all four of those points were in Trump’s favor, the race in Iowa would still be considered a toss-up.
Red states becoming battleground states will, sadly, be the story of Trump’s 2020 campaign. While nothing is certain until the votes are tallied, polling suggests Mr. Biden leads the incumbent in numerous critical battleground states. Iowa is the most alarming for GOP strategists, because it isn’t supposed to even be a battleground state.
Biden leading Trump in Iowa would have been unthinkable at the start of the year. However, the Democratic candidate currently leads the incumbent thanks to a lift from women, younger voters and white voters with college educations. Unlike other Republican-led states, however, Iowa sees a majority of voters over 65 throwing in with Biden. Forty-nine percent of voters over 65 have said they prefer Biden, to 42 percent saying they prefer Trump.
Of course, polls aren’t votes, and Election Day is still two weeks away. For those looking to find some crystal ball into the future, there is no way to know for certain which candidate will carry the election. After all, in 2016, Donald Trump seemed to be lagging in the polls until the weeks leading up to the election. What some thought was a fluke of political luck became a genuine movement, and Mr. Trump became president.
However, at present, the numbers are looking grim for the Trump Campaign. Their best bet at this stage is to make their case to moderate voters who might otherwise be convinced by Biden’s calls for urgent action in the face of the pandemic. Now is the time for the president to focus on the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic fallout to show that he truly is a president of the people.
