An Iowa poll that unexpectedly placed Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in what was previously expected to be a safe state for Republicans has sent shockwaves among US pollsters.

The Selzer Poll for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed Harris with a three-point lead over her Republican rival.

Midwestern Iowa is not one of the seven battleground states of the 2024 elections, which consisted of the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the Sun Belt states of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona.

While political pundits and pollsters are very wary of placing too much stock in a single poll, Selzer is a well-respected polling organization with a strong track record in Iowa. If Harris were even competitive in Iowa — which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 — it could radically reshape the race.

According to the Selzer poll, Harris has a 47% to 44% lead among likely voters. A September poll showed Trump with a four-point lead over Harris, and a June survey showed him with an 18-point lead over then-candidate Joe Biden.

“It’s hard for anyone to say they saw this coming,” pollster J Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co, told the Register. “She has clearly achieved a leadership position.”

The poll found that women are steering the late shift toward Harris in the state. If this were true and confirmed more broadly, it would also matter as the Harris campaign has focused on singling out women amid a wide gender gap with Republican male voters. Harris and her campaign have focused on overturning federal abortion rights by the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court.

The reaction among pundits and pollsters was largely one of shock and surprise, although it was also noted that a rival voting group still had Trump leading in Iowa.

“This is a stunning poll. But Ann Seltzer (sic) has as stellar a track record as any pollster when it comes to predicting election results in her state. Women are the driving force behind this wave. Omens for the country?” said David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama.

“I mean, there are margins of error and polls can be outliers and I doubt Harris will win Iowa, but Selzer is extremely highly regarded and a race within the margin in Iowa is not impossible, especially if the reported late shifts to Harris were real ” said Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.

Selzer is the highest-rated pollster in the national U.S. survey by polling guru Nate Silver, one of the most closely watched polling experts in the U.S.

“In the world where Harris wins Iowa, she is likely to be cleaning up elsewhere in the Midwest, especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, in which case she will already almost certainly win the Electoral College,” Silver said on his website.

However, he also warned that another survey was published in Iowa on Saturday that still showed Trump ahead. The Emerson poll shows the former US president leading the state by nine points compared to Harris.

“It is incredibly courageous to release this poll. It won’t put Harris ahead in our prediction, because there was another poll in Iowa today that favored Trump. But I wouldn’t want to play poker against Ann Selzer,” Silver said.

That seemed to prevent premature celebrations on behalf of many Democrats.

“Celebrate the Selzer poll for 90 seconds and get back to work. We have an election to win,” said Christopher Hale, a former Democratic congressional candidate in Tennessee.