Race Tightens For Rep. Steve King, Who Predicted Civil War Over Gay Marriage Ruling

A new poll released Tuesday shows the race for Iowa's 4^th Congressional District tightening.

According to a Change Research online survey, Representative Steve King, a Republican, is polling with just a 1-point lead over his Democratic challenger, J.D. Scholten. The poll was conducted from October 27 to 29 and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Forty-four percent of respondents said they would vote for Scholten, while forty-five percent favored King. A plurality (48%) of respondents also said they view King unfavorably.

The new poll comes just days after 11 people died in a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. The 69-year-old King has been widely criticized for supporting candidates with ties to white nationalists.

On Tuesday, Land O'Lakes pulled its support for King's re-election.

“We take our civic responsibility seriously, want our contributions to be a positive force for good and also seek to ensure that recipients of our contributions uphold our company's values,” the company said in a statement.

Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, a Republican, also criticized King's rhetoric in a tweet, calling King's recent comments “completely inappropriate.” “We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior,” Stivers wrote.

King also has a long history of opposing LGBT rights. He scored zero on the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) latest Congressional Scorecard, a measure of a lawmaker's support for LGBT rights.

Last year, he suggested transgender troops only enlist to get free surgery. He is also strongly opposed to marriage equality, saying separately that the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex unions means “you can marry my lawnmower” and predicted it would lead to civil war.

In a 2011 interview, he proudly insisted that he's opposed to marriage equality.

(Related: Steve King sets the record straight: He's anti-gay marriage.)

According to Reuters, King has raised less than half of the $1.7 million raised by Scholten. Despite the financial deficit, politics blog fivethirtyeight.com predicts King has an 81.7% chance of winning.