An Iowan here to try to answer a few questions. I don't find the Des Moines Register to be particularly partisan and it's Editorial board endorsed Bruce Braley in this race and refused to endorse either Gubernatorial candidate. Unfortunately, they did endorse Romney in 2012, so it's not all great from that paper.
As for the poll itself, this is the second poll from the Register to come out with Ernst up big. The first was a month or so ago and had Ernst up 6 which was a total shocker at the time and occurred at a time when other polls were showing the race anywhere from Braley +2 to Ernst +2. In the day following the Register poll, other polls came out showing a much tighter race.
Flash forward to now and again the Register comes out with a poll showing Ernst up even more at +7 while other polls taken during the same polling period are showing Ernst +2 to Braley +1.
I don't believe it's malicious, but I do believe these polls hurt. So many more Iowans are seeing these Des Moines Register polls and it creates an environment where the average person believes that Ernst is going to win comfortably. It could very easily hurt our turnout on Election day as the average voter isn't going to Real Clear Politics (or any other similar site) to see that many other pollsters forecast a tight race.
The "farmer from Iowa" quote from Braley has really, really hurt him. This is really similar to Mitt Romney's "47%" quote in terms of the damage it is doing to him (not saying it's justified, just that it's being repeated in 4/5 Ernst ads, so it has traction). In my opinion, the Democrats have done a terrible job of handling this gaffe as it's been common knowledge forever. If they couldn't figure out how to minimize the damage, they should have tried to run someone else.
I don't want to be a downer to the community here at DU, but I feel pessimistic about Braley's chances to keep Harkin's seat blue for another six years. One of the big, lesser talked about, hurdles for Braley to overcome is that we have a terrible Governor by the name of Terry Branstad who is projected to win by anywhere from 18-23 pts. His opponent, Jack Hatch, has basically thrown in the towel and hasn't had any advertising on TV forever (largely due to lack of funds). This means that, in order to win the Senate race, we are going to have to rely on ticket splittters which is always a dicey proposition. For what it's worth the same DM Register poll that just had Ernst up 7, had Branstad up 24 which was 4-6 points more than other polls by other outlets done during the same time. If there's some hope for Braley (and I do think there is some) it's that this poll sure looks like it over sampled Republicans or was just an outlier.
It's really sad what Iowa is becoming politically as we will likely re-elect Branstad, re-elect Rep. Steve King (not my district, but one of the worst reps in Congress, Google him if unfamiliar), and hand the Senate over to the Republican's by electing a fringy Tea Party type Republican in Joni Ernst.
Finally, I'd just like to say that I wish Senator Harkin either would have stayed on for another term or left one term earlier so that his seat would be filled during a Presidential election. I was unaware (or forgot) about the history of Democrats struggling in mid-term elections and you'd think that Harkin would have been savvy enough to retire at a time where it was most likely that his seat would remain with his party. That said, this seat seemed like a lock for Braley 6 plus months ago and everything just kind of fell off the rails for him.
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