FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten observed today, “Clinton won 490 counties to over 2,600 for Trump. But within those Clinton counties, ~74.5 million votes cast. Just 63 million in Trump’s.”

His comment made me wonder: what would the Iowa numbers show?

According to certified results from the Secretary of State’s office, Iowans cast 1,566,031 ballots for presidential candidates in the 2016 general election.

The total votes cast for presidential candidates in the six counties Hillary Clinton won are as follows:

Polk: 231,555
Linn: 117,098
Scott: 86,220
Johnson: 76,940
Black Hawk: 64,405
Story: 50,667

Total: 626,885 ballots cast in counties Clinton carried.

That’s only 40.0 percent of the total Iowa presidential vote.

Although the Clinton counties are gaining in population, Iowa Democrats clearly can’t win statewide solely by pumping up their margin in these six counties. Our candidates must be more competitive across the board, turning more of the other 93 counties blue and losing the red ones by less, to recapture winnable state House and Senate seats or Congressional districts that voted for Donald Trump.

All of the contenders for Iowa Democratic Party chair recognize the need to address this problem as we prepare to fight largely on our own during the next election cycle.

Bleeding Heartland will publish much more this year about individual counties, as part of this series and as stand-alone posts by guest authors who know certain parts of of the state well. Although outsiders may consider Iowa a homogeneous state, the “political culture” is not the same in every county, so we need to be open to a variety of ways to involve volunteers, recruit candidates, communicate with potential supporters, and get out the vote.

Please consider contributing to this in-depth local coverage. A few guidelines for guest authors are here.