Democrat Rob Sand led Republican Zach Lahn by 10 points among likely voters in a new poll of the governor’s race in Iowa, a state President Donald Trump won in each of his three presidential bids. Although Iowa has shifted rightward over the past decade, Democrats are hopeful about their prospects in the Hawkeye State this November. Sand, the current state auditor, has built a steady polling lead over Lahn, a businessman, and forecasters have shifted the race toward Democrats in the past few weeks.
Iowa backed President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but it voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, giving him a 13-point victory in 2024, a sign that the once-purple state could be drifting away from competitive territory. Sand’s candidacy will gauge whether Democrats can make a comeback in the state, particularly among the white, working-class voters who voted for Obama before casting their ballots for Trump. The new poll showed Sand up by 10 percentage points among likely voters, 51 percent to 41 percent.
But he led by 11 points among all registered voters, 50 percent to 39 percent. His lead in the poll was bolstered by his ability to win over some voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2024 while also holding together the Democratic Party. He won 97 percent of Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 voters, with only 1 percent of them backing Lahn.
Among Trump voters, however, Sand won 12 percent to Lahn’s 73 percent. This suggests that some Trump voters are breaking Republican ranks to support the Democratic candidate. Harris voters also said they were more motivated to vote—94 percent said they would definitely vote, compared to 90 percent of Trump voters.
The poll also found that the president is broadly unpopular in Iowa despite his past victories. Forty-one percent of Iowa respondents said they approved of Trump, compared to 57 percent who said they disapproved of him, the poll found. It surveyed 2,169 registered voters, 2,043 of whom were classified as “strict” likely voters, from September 3-8.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent among registered voters and the likely voter subset. The poll’s sample included 38 percent of respondents who have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 31 percent of Iowans overall with at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the U.S. A Lahn spokesperson told Newsweek on Friday that the poll is “not a reliable source.” “Rob has spent over $7 million to go backwards in the polls.
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