Joni Ernst Leads in Third Straight Iowa Senate Poll

Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst leads Democrat Bruce Braley in another poll.

A Vox Populi poll has Ernst with a five-point lead (49%-44%), and it is the third straight poll to have Ernst ahead after she secured the nomination last Tuesday.

According to The Hill, the poll was conducted in the two days after Ernst got the nomination and “has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.”

Two other polls last week found Ernst with a lead after her opponent, Democrat Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA), insulted women and farmers — a “Loras College’s Public Opinion Survey Center poll had Ernst leading with 48% to Braley’s 41.7%. A Rasmussen Reports poll also has Ernst leading Braley by one percentage point (45%-44%).” 

As Breitbart News noted, Ernst navigated the GOP civil war and received endorsements from Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney and united Republicans, who need to gain six seats to win back the Senate, who thought she gave them the best chance of winning back Iowa’s Senate.

In endorsing her, Palin explicitly noted that Democrats would not be able to play the phony “war on women” card against Ernst, an Iraq War veteran who serves in the National Guard. She later made the point that Democrats would also not be able to play the populist/income inequality card on Ernst, who grew up on a farm castrating hogs and rides a Harley to the shooting range. Braley, Ernst’s opponent, was caught on video denigrating Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as “just a farmer from Iowa” who was not smart enough to be Chair the Judiciary Committee. Longtime Iowa political observer David Yepsin said Braley’s  “elitist” remarks would “hurt” him in the fall. Braley’s campaign insulted farmers again last week when a prominent surrogate said that castrating hogs was “animal mutilation” before walking back those remarks. 

Ernst now has a slight lead in the RealClearPolitics average of the polls after having trailed Braley by about six percentage points before she got the nomination.