Just three days before Election Day, Republican Joni Ernst has surged to a 7-point lead in the final Des Moines Register poll of the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Iowa.
Ernst broke the critical majority threshold in the survey, winning 51 percent to Democrat Bruce Braley’s 44 percent among likely voters, outside the margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.7 percentage points.
“This race looks like it’s decided,” pollster J. Ann Selzer told the Register. “That said, there are enormous resources being applied to change all that.”
The news is troubling for Democrats, who view the Iowa contest as central to their path to maintaining their Senate majority.
“If we win Iowa we’re going to do just fine,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told progressive activists on a conference call on Saturday. “Iowa is critical. There’s no other way to say it.”
The poll featured interviews with 701 likely voters from Oct. 28-31.
The three most recent polls before the Register survey each had Ernst leading by 1 point.
