Democrat Theresa Greenfield holds a slim edge over Republican Sen. Joni Ernst in the Iowa Senate race, which has emerged as one of the most expensive and competitive in the country, according to the state's gold-standard poll.
Greenfield leads Ernst, 45 percent to 42 percent, among likely voters, according to the poll from the Des Moines Register, which was conducted before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Just 3 percent of voters said they supported someone else, and 7 percent of voters were undecided.
Greenfield also led Ernst by 3 points in the newspaper's June poll.
Despite the stability of the race, both parties have invested massive sums of money into the race so far aiming to define each candidate and are poised to spend even more. Democrats have nearly $40 million booked between now and Election Day, while Republicans have almost $33 million, according to data from Advertising Analytics.
Iowa is considered a critical race for control of the Senate: Ernst is running for a second term, and Greenfield, a businesswoman who attempted to run for the House in 2018, has never before held public office.
The poll provides a baseline view of a hyper-competitive race upon which to judge potential swings among the electorate over President Donald Trump's pending Supreme Court appointment. Ernst has not yet said whether she supports confirming a new justice prior to the election, while Greenfield has called for the confirmation to hold until after the election.
Iowans are split on Ernst, who won by 8 points in 2014: 44 percent view her favorably, and 44 percent view her unfavorably. Her image is largely unchanged from the previous Des Moines Register Poll in June.
Greenfield, who has never previously held office, has a slightly positive image, with 40 percent of Iowans viewing her favorably and 36 percent viewing her unfavorably — her negative image rose 16 percentage points from the prior survey after a barrage of negative ads over the summer. But she still remains significantly less defined than Ernst: About a quarter, 24 percent, of Iowans have no opinion of her heading into the final six weeks of the election.
Greenfield topped Ernst, 47 percent to 32 percent, among independent voters and also had a 20-point advantage among women. She also had support from 10 percent of voters who said they had supported Trump in 2016, while Ernst had support from just 2 percent of voters who had backed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The Register did not report results for the presidential race between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden in Saturday's release.
The poll was conducted Sept. 14-17 and interviewed 803 Iowa adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. For the horse-race question, the poll interviewed 658 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
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