Opinion | Womens Anger Might Save Us From Trump

On Saturday evening I was watching a movie with my family when a text message made me gasp so hard that it scared them.“What happened?” my husband asked, worried.

“Nothing bad,” I said, slightly overcome.“It’s just … Ann Selzer has Harris up three in Iowa!”All day, political nerds had been waiting for the results of J.

Ann Selzer’s famously accurate poll of Iowa.The state hasn’t been swingy in a long time, but the Selzer poll, conducted for The Des Moines Register, can offer clues about broader trends in the electorate.

In 2016, when many Democrats were feeling complacent about a Hillary Clinton victory, her survey showing Donald Trump leading by seven points in Iowa was an early indication of his underestimated strength in the Midwest.(He ended up winning Iowa by more than nine points.) In 2020, her poll again showed Trump ahead by seven points, which was both close to the final tally and, in retrospect, a sign that Joe Biden’s margins in neighboring states like Wisconsin would be much thinner than other polls were indicating.So many of us were anxious to see how big Trump’s lead would be this time, and the fact that Selzer instead found him losing came as a shock.

The poll may easily turn out to be wrong; Selzer’s record is as good as anyone’s in the business, but it’s not perfect.Should Kamala Harris win this election, though, the poll will be part of the story of her victory.

The reason for Selzer’s anomalous finding is simple: women.If it’s anywhere near accurate, it suggests that conventional political wisdom has been seriously underrating the scale of women’s fury over abortion bans and their revulsion at Trump’s cartoonishly macho campaign.Selzer’s poll shows independent women backing Harris by 28 points, and women 65 and older backing her by 2-1.

Speaking to Tim Miller of The Bulwark, Selzer speculated about what might have driven these numbers.“It was over the summer that Iowa’s six-week ban on abortion we...