A new poll finds Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton in Iowa by six points.
Quinnipiac University pollsters also quizzed likely voters about four presidential candidates — Trump, Clinton, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and the Green Party nominee. In that four-way race, Johnson, the Libertarian, got 10 percent support, Jill Stein of the Green Party got two percent and Trump’s lead over Clinton stretched to seven points.
The Quinnipiac Poll taken in Iowa a month ago showed Clinton with a two-point lead here.
Digging into other data in this new poll, Trump has an overwhelming 26 point lead among Iowa voters who are men. Clinton has a 10 point lead among women voters in Iowa. Peter Brown, the poll’s assistant director, says Trump is “running better in Iowa than other Midwestern states.”
Trump has a slight lead here among “no-party” or independent voters. Independents are the largest voting block in Iowa. The poll found 86 percent of Iowa Republicans backing Trump, while Clinton had the backing of 83 percent of Democrats.
Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann said Trump is “solidifying” his support among Republicans who backed other candidates in the Caucuses.
“The enthusiasm that I’m seeing out there is at a level that I did not see, quite frankly, with McCain or with Mitt Romney,” Kaufmann told Radio Iowa.
Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, spoke with Iowa reporters by phone four hours before the poll was released. He called Iowa a “battleground state.”
“Iowa could absolutely be the state that gets Hillary over the 270 mark (in the Electoral College),” Mook said. “…We run thousands of scenarios each night here on the campaign to look at where states stack up and Iowa continues to be right at the heart of those pivotal states.”
The Clinton campaign is identifying occasional voters, mapping out if they live close enough to the county auditor’s office or a “satellite voting” location to cast their ballot in person, but before November 8. Absentee vote-by-mail is an option touted to other infrequent voters.
“Targeting different voters to make sure that we’re offering them the easiest way to go vote,” Mook said.
Kaufmann said 2014 was a “transformational year” for the GOP, as the party stopped resisting and began an “early voting” push.
“We are doing everything we did then, then probably hundreds of thousands of dollars more,” Kaufmann said.
Early voting begins next week in Iowa, on Thursday, September 29.
This month’s Quinnipiac University Poll in Iowa has a margin of error of plus or minus four percent. In a two-person match-up in Iowa, Trump had 50 percent compared to Clinton’s 44 percent. In a four-way race, Trump had 44 percent; Clinton had 37 percent; Johnson had 10 percent and Stein had two percent.