First in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.
Two years ago, Iowa appeared to be on a different trajectory than much of the country. As Democrats won many of the midterm election races, including in our Midwestern neighboring states, Iowa experienced yet another “red wave.” Six of the last eight general elections in Iowa have been GOP landslides.
On November 5, Donald Trump improved on his 2020 performance almost across the board: in blue states like New York and New Jersey, swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, and red states like Texas and Iowa. He gained in rural counties, suburban counties, and urban centers, in states where both presidential candidates campaigned intensely, and in states where there was no “ground game” or barrage of political advertising. He gained among almost every demographic group except for college-educated women. He may become the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and only the second GOP nominee to win the popular vote since 1988.
The Trump resurgence isn’t unique to Iowa, or even the U.S.—grievance politics has been winning elections all over the world lately.
But that’s no comfort to Democrats here, who probably won’t win back any Congressional districts and suffered more losses among their already small contingents in the Iowa House and Senate.
THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE
I didn’t believe the final Iowa Poll by Selzer and Co., which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 47 percent to 44 percent. But I was hopeful Selzer was tapping into late movement toward Harris, and Trump might carry Iowa by a smaller margin than before.
Instead, Trump is ahead by more than 223,000 votes, a 14-point margin. (That may shrink slightly once Story County reports.)
Not only did Harris not flip a single county, Trump carried Scott County. So the Democratic nominee is on track to carry only five of Iowa’s 99 counties, assuming Story goes for Harris.
Selzer said in a November 5 statement,
Tonight, I’m of course thinking about how we got where we are […]
The poll findings we produced for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom did not match what the Iowa electorate ultimately decided in the voting booth today. I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened. And, I welcome what that process might teach me.
Even with perfect sampling methods, about one in 20 polls will be way off, just by chance.
Selzer adjusts her results by age and gender to reflect the general population of Iowa. But unlike some other political pollsters, she does not weight her findings by partisan affiliation, education level, or recalled vote from the last presidential election. I would guess that the final Iowa Poll had too many Democrats, too many college-educated voters, and/or too many Joe Biden voters in the respondent pool.
U.S. HOUSE
Election forecasters viewed Iowa’s first and third districts as among the two or three dozen most competitive U.S. House races. In IA-01, Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan massively outperformed Harris and benefited from record-breaking turnout in the “People’s Republic of Johnson County.” But unofficial results show her trailing two-term Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks by 203,899 votes to 203,486 (49.9 percent to 49.8 percent).
The Associated Press has not called the race. Bohannan has not conceded, posting on social media, “We owe it to Iowa voters to ensure every vote is counted and every voice is heard.” However, it’s hard to see how she could net hundreds of additional votes. The only county in the district not fully reported is Washington, where Republicans typically have an advantage.
First-term Representative Zach Nunn lost Polk County just under 28,000 votes—which may sound like a lot, but not when you consider that Democrat Cindy Axne came out of Polk with a 39,000-vote advantage in 2020. The writing was on the wall early for IA-03 challenger Lanon Baccam. With all 21 counties in, Nunn has 213,625 votes to 197,777 for the Democrat (51.8 percent to 47.9 percent).
Some Democrats hoped for a surprisingly close race in the second district after seeing the Selzer poll. But Republican Ashley Hinson easily won a third term with 231,292 votes to 168,623 for Sarah Corkery (57.0 percent to 41.6 percent).
Representative Randy Feenstra won a third term in IA-04 easily, with 228,557 votes to 96,771 for Democratic challenger Ryan Melton (70.0 percent to 29.65 percent). Since Story County has not reported, it’s unclear whether Melton can improve on his 2022 vote share.
I was struck by the fact that only 1,019 people (0.31 percent) wrote in some other candidate. Both GOP primary challenger Kevin Virgil and Libertarian candidate Charles Aldrich were encouraging voters to write them in for this race.
IOWA SENATE
Democrats went into this election holding sixteen of the 50 Iowa Senate seats. Among the four top-targeted races, it appears that Democrats won one, lost two, and are barely clinging to one.
Unofficial results indicate that Matt Blake defeated Brad Zaun, the longest-serving current GOP senator, in Iowa Senate district 22 by 19,106 votes to 17,330 (52.4 percent to 47.5 percent).
Democrat Eric Giddens lost to Dave Sires in Senate district 38, where Republican leaders did not even try to win, by 17,225 votes to 16,830 (50.5 percent to 49.4 percent).
In Senate district 20, Democrat Nate Boulton trails GOP challenger Mike Pike by 15,640 votes to 15,597 (49.96 percent to 49.83 percent). Boulton plans to ask for a recount. But unless there is some unusual tabulation error, a recount won’t change a margin of 43 votes. Remember that Iowa no longer counts late-arriving absentee ballots, even if they were postmarked before election day.
The most uncertain result is in Senate district 14, where Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott leads Mark Hanson by nineteen votes out of 40,898 ballots cast. That’s 20,429 votes to 20,410 (49.95 percent to 49.90 percent). The 59 people who wrote in a candidate could have changed the outcome. I anticipate a recount here as well. Usually those don’t change results by more than a handful of votes. But Dallas County forgot to count a large batch of ballots in 2016, so you can’t rule out some tabulation problem.
If unofficial results don’t change, Democrats will hold fifteen Senate seats and Republicans 35 next year.
As bad as that sounds, it could have been worse. In the open Senate district 36 (the Dubuque-based seat where Pam Jochum is retiring), Democrat Tom Townsend appears to have won by just 15,267 votes to 14,957 (50.4 percent to 49.4 percent). I have long worried that Dubuque is headed down the path of Ottumwa. Democrats have lots of work to do in their former strongholds.
On a related note: Republicans defeated Democratic auditors in Dubuque, Clinton, and Woodbury counties.
IOWA HOUSE
Democrats went into this election holding 36 of the 100 House seats. They were guaranteed one pickup in House district 81, where Republicans did not field a candidate.
However, Democrats lost four of the six districts where Republicans invested hundreds of thousands of dollars.
First-term Representative Molly Buck lost to Ryan Weldon in House district 41 (covering part of Ankeny) by 10,700 votes to 10,564 (50.2 percent to 49.6 percent).
Two-term incumbent Sue Cahill lost to David Blom in House district 52 (covering part of Marshalltown) by 6,435 votes to 5,869 (52.3 percent to 47.7 percent).
In a rematch from 2022 that signaled serious problems in Dubuque, eight-term incumbent Chuck Isenhart lost to Jennifer Smith in House district 72 by 8,575 votes to 7,509 (53.2 percent to 46.6 percent).
Finally, Democratic nominee Jeremy True fell short in the open-seat race in House district 59 (Mason City area). Republican Christian Hermanson won by 8,051 votes to 7,695 (51.1 percent to 48.8 percent).
Two Democrats withstood massive GOP spending (and lying). In House district 20, covering part of Council Bluffs and Carter Lake, Josh Turek prevailed against James Wassell by 5,862 votes to 5,298 (52.5 percent to 47.4 percent).
Heather Matson won House district 42 (the southern part of Ankeny) by 23 votes in 2022. She held on against Heather Stephenson by 9,103 votes to 8,953 (50.3 percent to 49.5 percent). Stephenson may request a recount, but unless there was some major mishap in the Polk County auditor’s office, the result will hold up.
Democrats had a near-miss in what was considered a safe seat in Davenport. Monica Kurth defeated Nathan Ramker by 6,580 votes to 6,533 (50.1 percent to 49.7 percent) in House district 98.
All three House Republicans whom Democrats targeted won re-election. In Dallas County, David Young carried House district 28 by 10,361 votes to 9,081 for Laura Snider (53.2 percent to 46.6 percent).
On the east side of Polk County, Bill Gustoff hung on in House district 40 by 8,718 votes to 8,397 (50.9 percent to 49.0 percent).
In the northwest suburb of Johnston, Eddie Andrews won a third term in House district 43 by 9,594 votes to 8,945 for Tiara Mays-Sims (50.9 percent to 47.5 percent), with about 1.5 percent going to Brett Nelson.
Assuming no changes through recounts, Republicans will hold 67 seats and Democrats 33 when the Iowa House reconvenes in January.
P.S.—I welcome guest commentaries about any aspect of the 2024 elections or where Iowa Democrats should go from here. I don’t think there’s any simple answer. As David Weigel wrote at Semafor,
The apparent result means the defeat of a strategy that nearly all Democrats embraced after the 2016 election: Delivering populist labor, tax, and healthcare policies that they thought could win back Obama-Trump voters and stop any more losses with non-white voters.
P.P.S.—I won’t be surprised if Governor Kim Reynolds picks Zaun to be her new lieutenant governor. He’s on very good terms with Trump, and Reynolds will need to mend fences with the next president after spending months campaigning for Governor Ron DeSantis before the Iowa caucuses.
Top photo: View of Donald Trump from behind at one of his last campaign rallies in Reading, Pennsylvania on November 4. First published on the Trump campaign’s Facebook page.
6 Comments
called it
I predicted that Trump would win Iowa by double digits along with the electoral college and popular vote. Selzer Poll was a bad joke. Was proud to vote for RFK Jr, a Democrat who was ostracized from the party. Harris was a flawed candidate who was against fracking and the wall and then flipped her views. No one expected her to have the communication skills of an “Obama” but she was dubbed the word salad queen. Total disaster who avoided nothing more than softball interviews. DNC is to blame for losing the White House, Senate, and likely the House to the GOP. The “Kammy coronation” didn’t work.
ModerateDem Wed 6 Nov 4:22 AM
This election was, among other things...
…a decision to not acknowledge or address some serious realities of physics, chemistry, and biology. Physics, chemistry, and biology won’t care.
PrairieFan Wed 6 Nov 9:11 AM
No title
“Lessons of 2024” General Election, for Democracts: Literary quotations from an Ancient Greek—and a British Economist—
(1) Homer, “The Odyssey”—-
“Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies.”
(2) John Maynard Keynes, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”—
“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones….”
The Democratic Party, in my view, to win elections, again, must renew itself—and offer the people of Iowa and the United States, a new basis for economic security and prosperity, and a new standard of living—through new economic and social ideas, and a new economic and social agenda—beyond the “America First” economic agenda of the Republican Party and Donald Trump!
We live in a new, unprecedented era of economic uncertainty and insecurity, resulting from new, unprecedented, structual changes in the American Economy, and the Global Economy. The Democratic Party must address this new reality. and this new challenge to American Democracy!
Richard Sherzan
Richard Sherzan Wed 6 Nov 12:27 PM
@Richard
Rob Sand 26. It’s that easy.
Karl M Wed 6 Nov 1:13 PM
Democrats need to spend the next year listening to voters
There’s too much confirmation bias on the part of the Democratic leaders who tend to only listen to people who agree with them. There’s a tendency for Democrats to want to take from people who perceive themselves as not having much and redistribute “wealth.” People don’t like being told to vote a certain way because its good for them when they know the party will cost them money. (Democrats countering these concerns with informing voters that Republicans will give tax breaks to corporations was not helpful.) Individuals’ concerns about funding their retirement, paying for groceries and gas for autos, and poor behaviors in schools were ignored. For example, Democrats focus was on promoting mass transportation and a lot of people just need gas for their cars to go to work. People would also rather have their own healthy retirement and pay for what they need themselves than rely on handouts.
Democrats need to stop treating voters who disagree with them as though they are stupid. They also need to not antagonize religious voters. There are a lot of social media posts today about praising the Lord. It would be interesting to hear more about why people who think of themselves as religious voted for Trump. There are voters who think Trump was sent to punish liberals. Somehow the Democrats need to rewrite that narrative or break the cult.
Immigration wasn’t spoken about much in Iowa, but it is a huge issue nationwide. There are tents everywhere in some places, and many people have no where to go. Voters are looking at big democratic cities and seeing a lot of challenges to address.
The Dow Jones is up big today, and I don’t remember Democrats talking about it before the election. The plan to tax unrealized capital gains was a bad plan and farmers were probably worried their children would pay taxes on gains when they die. Some of the Democrats seemed like they were one issue candidates and didn’t seem to notice when Republicans picked up their cause and neutralized any benefit from it.
For now, Democrats need to listen more, regroup, consider focusing on what they can do to improve life locally, and act to preserve the environment.
Biden and Harris both selected people who were weaker candidates than themselves to run with and Biden wasn’t too strong to begin with. Trump selected Vance who is not weaker than Trump. All is something to ponder on. I heard some folks say before the election they were going to vote based on policies. It’s time to figure out what policies people voted on.
Michelle Wed 6 Nov 2:59 PM
Per a comment above...
…there are Democrats in the Iowa Legislature who have been trying to “act to preserve the environment” and have been continuously thwarted by Republican majorities who not only have very limited interest in preserving the environment on the state level, but have also been passing laws to prevent Iowa towns and counties from preserving the environment. This will now happen even more on a national scale. The hands of state and local governments, when it comes to preserving the environment, will almost certainly become more and more tied.
I’ve spent most of my time for the past six decades as a volunteer working to preserve the environment. The next several years, because the results of this election, are going to be overwhelmingly difficult. Deep sympathies to the many conservationist Iowans I know who are now trying to come to grips with that reality.
PrairieFan Wed 6 Nov 3:41 PM