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Cruz is rising in Iowa; Clinton Back Out to Dominant Lead PPP's newest Iowa poll finds a tight race on the Republican side in the state with Donald Trump at 22%, Ben Carson at 21%, Ted Cruz at 14%, Marco Rubio at 10%, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal each at 6%, and Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina each at 5%. Polling further back are Chris Christie at 3%, John Kasich, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum each at 2%, Lindsey Graham with less than 1%, and Jim Gilmore and George Pataki each with no supporters. Compared to our last Iowa poll...

The Republican nomination fight continues to be dominated by political newcomers Donald Trump and Ben Carson. In Iowa, Carson has moved up to tie Trump. In South Carolina and New Hampshire, there is Donald Trump with a large lead, and then there is everyone else.

After a summer largely spent raising money for his Republican campaign for president, Marco Rubio says he's about to start spending a whole lot more time in Iowa and the other early voting states. "There were obviously other things we needed to do," the Florida senator said this past week in an interview with The Associated Press.

Donald Trump revealed Sunday what so many have suspected: that he is the masked vigilante Batman who terrorizes the criminals of Gotham by night. Trump made the revelation during a helicopter ride at the Iowa State Fair. “Mr. Trump?” a little boy asked. “Yes?” Trump said. “Are you Batman?” he asked. “I am Batman,” Trump responded.

Veteran Iowa political operative Chuck Laudner spent the last presidential election crisscrossing the state in his own pickup truck with Rick Santorum at his side, driving the former Pennsylvania senator to a surprise victory in the crucial Iowa Republican caucus in 2012. This time around, Laudner is running Donald Trump's Iowa campaign. But don't expect Trump to hop in the passenger seat of Laudner's "Chuck Truck" anytime soon. "No, no, not gonna happen," Laudner said in an interview Friday at the Iowa State Fair. That's because Trump is largely eschewing the classic retail politicking that has defined presidential campaigns in...

Donald Trump will not be giving young children helicopter rides at the Iowa State Fair. The Daily Mail reported Thursday that Donald Trump had asked the Iowa State Fair for permission to bring his helicopter to the fairgrounds to give children rides in it. The publication reported that he would set up the thrill ride at his own risk and expense. “We’re going to fly it out to Iowa and I’m going to have it there,” Trump reportedly told the publication. “I’m going to try giving kids lifts in the helicopter.” However, state fair spokeswoman Mindy Williamson told the Des...

As they watched his infamous presidential campaign launch speech, in which he assailed Mexico for – as he put it – dumping its worst on the U.S. border, many observers declared that Donald Trump’s run for the White House was D.O.A. When he did well in polls of likely GOP voters, many observers called it a fluke. After he said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who was a Navy pilot and spent about five years in a North Vietnamese prison, was not a true hero, adding “I like people who weren’t captured,” many firmly believed it was the end...

DES MOINES, Iowa - Senator Joni Ernst’s Jobs, Opportunity, and New Ideas PAC announced that elected leaders from across the state will join declared and potential presidential candidates at the Roast and Ride event to be held at the Central Iowa Expo in Boone on June 6th. Newly confirmed speakers include Governor Terry Branstad, Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds, Senator Chuck Grassley, Congressmen Steve King and Congressman David Young. Previously, Ernst announced that Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker would be speaking at the event as well. Prior to the roast, Ernst...

When Trump declared to the Republican Party of Iowa’s Lincoln Dinner that he is going to make an announcement in June that’s “going to surprise a lot of people,” he wasn’t preparing to launch his long-awaited candidacy. He was simply doing what he always does: Promote the Donald. Generate headlines. Get people talking. His June announcement is guaranteed to raise all of the excitement of such previous bids for publicity as “Donald Trump Announces Men’s Fragrance” (March 24), “Donald Trump Announces Phil Mickelson Villa at Trump National Doral” (March 5), “Donald Trump Announces Florida International University as new Home for...

DES MOINES — While many Iowans scatter to the coasts, mountains and “Up North” in summer, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is hearing from a lot of people who want to spend the next few months here. Hillary for Iowa, the 2016 presidential hopeful’s campaign in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, reports receiving applications from more than 1,000 people who want to be Clinton fellows in Iowa this summer. Interviews are underway for the Hillary for Iowa Organizing Fellowship program, which will give those selected the opportunity to learn organizing strategies as full-time volunteers on the former secretary of state’s Iowa caucus...

An Iowa gun reform bill is moving forward.  It has passed the House 75 to 24 and appears likely to be approved by the Senate.  A bill with much the same provisions has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.  From thegaxette.com: The House voted 75-24 to send House File 527 to the Senate, where a similar bill has been approved by the Judiciary Committee. Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, said the bill “does many things to advance Second Amendment rights” such as allowing Iowans to get noise suppressors that are regulated by the federal government. It also makes gun carry...

Around 9:00 last night, the TV pundits realized that it would no longer do to say that it was an anti-incumbent year: The vast majority of the incumbents losing — all of them in the Senate — were Democrats. Nor could the election be chalked up to red-state reaction. Republicans took Senate seats in Iowa and Colorado, which voted for Obama twice apiece, and governorships in Maryland and Illinois, which last voted Republican in 1988. The wave gave Republicans a larger Senate majority than all but the most confident among them had expected, and added to the ranks of their...

By this point in an election year, when polls are coming in by the bucketload late in the evening, you can get a sense for which pollsters are taking fresh samples of public opinion and which are herding toward the conventional wisdom. J. Ann Selzer, whose firm Selzer & Company conducts the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll, is in the former group: She’s always been one to trust what her data is telling her. On Dec. 31, 2007, Selzer’s poll was among the first to show a large lead for Barack Obama in the Iowa Democratic caucuses — most other...

Retiring Democratic Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin says that Iowa voters shouldn’t be fooled because Joni Ernst is “really attractive” and “sounds nice.”

The media’s sense of entitlement is really something to behold whenever they feel like they aren’t getting their due. The most recent example of this phenomenon has been the media’s reaction to Joni Ernst’s decision to skip meetings with three editorial board meetings, including one with the Des Moines Register, last week. The media, predictably, is up in arms over the gall of Ernst in skipping their gatekeeping function, leading the media to declare that Ernst is unfit for office. Predictably, Ernst has responded that she sees no value added in wasting her time kowtowing to people who aren’t going...

Joni Ernst, the Iowa state senator and Iraq War veteran, was standing in a barn in a purple flannel shirt and an unzipped vest. Beside her, various swine burrowed in the hog lot; two small pigs spooned; there was copious squealing. When Ernst, who grew up on a farm castrating hogs, opened her mouth to speak, she drew the inevitable connection between her upbringing and her current role as a Republican candidate for the United States Senate. “When I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork,” Ernst said, smiling. Title cards reinforced her credentials. (“Joni Ernst: Mother. Soldier....

Joni Ernst, U.S. Senate candidate, has a banana, a cup of coffee, and a 31-foot RV painted with American flags, landscapes of corn, and hogs. She also has Iowa stretching vastly out in front of her. Seven counties today, eight counties yesterday, 99 counties in 44 days, and a tour she’s calling “Iowa Knows Best” that is intended to persuade Iowans to send her to Washington so she can show the federal government a better way: “the Iowa way.” The Iowa way is fiscal responsibility, she has been telling the people on this tour. The Iowa way is cutting taxes...

(AUDIO-AT-LINK)There's a woman running in the tight race for the Senate in Iowa — one of the contests that will decide who controls the Senate next year. In the 21st century, a female candidate for Senate may not sound historic. But in Iowa, it is. The state shares a rare distinction with Mississippi: It has never elected a woman to the Senate, to the House, or to be governor. Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst is trying to change that in her race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley — a race in which the role of female voters is central....

DES MOINES, Iowa—Marilynn Wadden, a retired elementary school teacher, was smiling as she settled into her seat at a Democratic field office here and began making calls for Senate candidate Bruce Braley. "We love this," Wadden says of the computer system that is doing the dialing for her. "It is just such a joy." Two years ago, when Wadden was making calls as a volunteer for President Obama, she had to punch numbers into the phone herself, write down voters' answers on paper, and then hand off the sheets to a data-entry team. "Now, we're kind of doing the data...

There is certainly plenty going right for the Iowa GOP in 2014: an unpopular Democratic president, a favorable political climate, and a popular GOP governor cruising to reelection atop the ticket. But as they are in Senate races across the country—Colorado, Alaska, North Carolina, to name a few—Democrats here are hoping smart tactics can offset a national mood that favors Republicans. And in Iowa, fears of the Democratic machine lurk not far below the surface. "Am I confident? Of course," Oman says. "Am I overconfident? Of course not." What the Republicans also have going for them this year is Ernst...