Fifth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2020 state and federal elections.

Democrat Rita Hart’s campaign has asked for a recount in all 24 counties of Iowa’s second Congressional district, where Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks led by 196,862 votes to 196,815 (49.92% to 49.90%) after the canvass. It’s the closest U.S. House race in the country, and one of the closest in Iowa history.

The lead has changed twice since election night: first, when fixing a tabulation error in Jasper County put Hart slightly ahead, and then when a correction in Lucas County moved Miller-Meeks back into the lead.

Recounts in Iowa rarely produce big changes in vote totals, so Republicans are confident they will pick up this seat. However, overcoming a deficit of 47 votes out of nearly 400,000 cast is certainly possible in a recount.

Either way, one fact is clear: Hart performed much better than a generic Democrat, perhaps better than any nominee not named Dave Loebsack could have in these circumstances.

Richard Lindgren first posted this essay at Godplaysdice.com. Radiolab has now uploaded a good podcast with similar conclusions. -promoted by Laura Belin

Benford’s Law is a fun statistical phenomenon that my own blog has explored a couple of times, most notably here, because of its usefulness in financial auditing. Benford has gained a sudden new popularity among 2020 election conspiracy sites, alleging huge vote rigging, but only in states where Donald Trump lost. However, this technique is invariably misused and misunderstood in these applications, and so, this is my attempt at some clarity.

We will start out with a good application of Benford’s Law, but if you want to skip right to the bad election vote-counting use, just drop down to the second header.

Herb Strentz envisions a musical inspired by top Iowa Republicans’ “unquestioning obedience” to President Donald Trump. -promoted by Laura Belin

We’ve had Broadway musicals inspired by American history, such as 1776 and Hamilton.

Now how about an Iowa take on the nation’s future with a political song and dance called Iowa’s Un-Strung Quartet? The musical would deal with U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Governors Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds in their attempts to harmonize with the persistently off-key Donald Trump.

The dark humor driving the discord would be the fact that Trump does not demand loyalty from his aides and his supporters.

Ira Lacher spoke with two young women who were severely affected by COVID-19 despite their low-risk profiles. -promoted by Laura Belin

When President Donald Trump walked out of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after being treated last month for COVID-19, he trashed every poll that predicted a Democratic presidential election rout.

Joe Biden won the electoral college and the popular vote, but Trump still collected 8 million more votes overall than he did in 2016, and won some states by larger margins than his first run at the presidency.

Third in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2020 state and federal elections.

White non-Hispanic Catholics supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a wide margin in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of exit polls and subsequent survey of validated voters.

Preliminary exit poll data suggests that Joe Biden improved his standing with those voters, losing white Catholics by 57 percent to 42 percent, compared to Clinton’s 64 percent to 31 percent deficit. That’s consistent with some polls taken during the campaign, which showed Biden gaining support among white Catholics–not surprising, since the Democratic nominee frequently referred to his Catholic faith and upbringing in public appearances.

I expected Biden to improve substantially on Clinton’s performance in Iowa’s most heavily Catholic counties, where “Kennedy Democrats” were once a solid voting bloc. But that didn’t happen.

On the contrary, Trump increased his raw vote totals and share of the vote in those counties, as he did in many parts of the state.

First in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2020 state and federal elections.

As Iowa Democrats begin to regroup after a second straight awful presidential election up and down the ballot, we need to be realistic about where we stand. The first step is recognizing we don’t live in a swing state anymore.

Bleeding Heartland will analyze the Iowa election results from many perspectives in the coming weeks. For now, let’s review the big picture: just like in 2016, the outcome was more devastating than any Democrat’s worst nightmare.

Turnout set a new record: Iowans cast at least 1,697,102 ballots, roughly 107,000 more than the high water mark of 1,589,951 people voting in the 2012 presidential election.

But as we learned in November 2018, high turnout doesn’t only help Democrats.

Dan Guild: Donald Trump’s presidency is defined by the stability of its unpopularity, and elections with incumbents are defined by perceptions of their job approval. -promoted by Laura Belin

I wrote at Crystal Ball in April that elections with incumbents are defined by perceptions of their job approval. In a post for this site in July, I suggested that Trump’s approval, and the sense across the country that things were out of control, reminded me of the difficulties that Jimmy Carter faced in his re-election.

On the eve of the election I find myself thinking about the parallel to 1980 again.

Dan Guild argues that Selzer & Co’s latest Iowa survey for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom may be missing a portion of the electorate. -promoted by Laura Belin

Talk to many Democrats about the election, and they will say, “I think Joe Biden is going to win, but the polls were so wrong last time.” There was, though, a notable exception to the list of flawed opinion polls from 2016: Ann Selzer’s final Iowa survey for the Des Moines Register. 

So when this year’s last Selzer poll shows Donald Trump winning Iowa by 48 percent to 41 percent, and Senator Joni Ernst beating Theresa Greenfield by 46 percent to 42 percent, people take notice. Selzer’s record within the polling community is arguably the best there is. How could she be wrong this time?

And yet, as I will show, I think she is.

Ira Lacher shares what’s on his mind two days before a momentous election. -promoted by Laura Belin

When deadline nears for sports columnists and they don’t have a clue what to write coherently about, many resort to “three-dot” columns, emptying their notebooks and typing whatever comes to mind, separated by three dots: “Iowa needed to play better Saturday. … How ’bout them Clones?”

As I write this, the election is just two days away and I don’t have a clue of long-form coherency. Instead, like bumper cars, a jumble of thoughts continues to career around my head; some colliding, some narrowly evading one another, but always in motion. Such as:

Dan Guild digs into polling data for clues on how big an opportunity the youth vote represents–not just in Iowa, but in every close race across the county. -promoted by Laura Belin

In the aftermath of 2016, the press focused on a number of reasons for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Rural voters were appropriately at the center of that discussion. Less discussed was what happened with those under age 30.

In the aftermath of that election, I researched the impact of young voters. I found that had Clinton carried the youth vote by the same margin as Barack Obama, she would have won 306 electoral votes.   

Exit poll data on the youth vote isn’t perfect, but even with its limitations, evidence suggests the decline in Democratic support among those between the ages of 18 and 29 was arguably the decisive factor in how Democratic margins declined from 2012 to 2016. 

More than a third of Donald Trump’s margin was made up from defections among those under 30 years of age. In Iowa, he won the youth vote.

Matt Whitaker’s unfailing loyalty to Donald Trump apparently extended to helping the president quash a criminal investigation of a foreign bank, according to an explosive new story by Eric Lipton and Benjamin Weiser in the New York Times.

While serving (unconstitutionally) as acting U.S. attorney general after the 2018 election, Whitaker blocked a probe of Halkbank, “a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran.”

Dave O’Connor teaches at Merrill Middle School in Des Moines. -promoted by Laura Belin

On October 14, the president of the United States held a superspreader event at the Des Moines Airport for 6,000 mostly un-masked, non-socially distanced supporters. Governor Kim Reynolds was right at his side. He did it on the same day that our neighbors in Wisconsin, who are now at the epicenter of the pandemic, opened a field hospital with 500 beds to try to relieve pressure on their overtaxed hospital system, and only eight days after hospitalizations for COVID-19 reached an all-time high in Iowa–a record that has been surpassed multiple times since.

And just for good measure, the rally directly violated the governor’s own emergency proclamations, which require organizers of mass gatherings to “ensure at least six feet of physical distance between each group or individual attending alone.”

Ira Lacher explores the phenomenon of COVID fatigue, which is “no surprise to psychologists” despite the devastating impact of the pandemic. -promoted by Laura Belin

With more than 224,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 and perhaps another 25,000 more to join them in November, you would think just about everyone would consider the coronavirus pandemic to be the top issue in the election.

And, that reasonable conclusion would join others from the Bizarro World.

Norman Brewer was a reporter and editor for the Des Moines Tribune from 1965 to 1978, then joined Gannett News Service in Washington, D.C. He also worked in The Des Moines Register bureau there and was director of employee communications at the Transportation Security Administration. -promoted by Laura Belin

In Norman Brewer’s novel Killer Politics: A Satirical Tale of Homegrown Terrorism, a Trump-like president inspires a white supremacist and his terrorist cell to attack civilians in a bid for civil war or martial law.

Excerpts from the novel, available on Amazon, follow.

Herb Strentz: I think I’ve found a way out, at least for me. I no longer “hate” the president. -promoted by Laura Belin

Many people are hesitant to say they “hate” Donald Trump. The hesitancy may spring from Biblical and other religious tenets, philosophy, wisdom and advice, going back at least 2,500 years to Confucius.

And, after all, the New Testament of the Christian Bible does call for people to love their enemy, to pray for those who persecute you, etc.

And there is even older advice about having to dig two graves if you seek revenge or hate — one for the object of your revenge or hatred and the other for yourself because of the self-destructive nature of revenge and hatred.

Dan Guild: Contrary to the usual dynamic of a debate between an incumbent and challenger, Donald Trump now looks like the risky alternative. -promoted by Laura Belin

To candidates who are behind, debates are “the thing with feathers.”

They offer one last chance to change the trajectory of a race. Historically they have mattered on occasion. In an unusual year, how they might matter is very, very, strange.

Former Governor Terry Branstad is back in Iowa, having resigned as U.S. ambassador to China in order to campaign for President Donald Trump, Senator Joni Ernst, and other Republicans on the ballot. He’s defending Trump’s trade policy toward China, despite the impact on Iowa farmers. Speaking with reporters on October 10, Branstad “discounted polls showing President Trump and Joe Biden tied in Iowa.”

It’s a waste of time to ask any politician about polls, and Branstad has already spoken to the media at length about U.S. foreign policy toward China. Here are four more salient matters Iowa reporters could raise with the former governor.

Richard Lindgren: “When I run the numbers, Donald Trump appears to own, to use a phrase a business colleague described him with in the 1990s Atlantic City era, a ‘zero-billion-dollar business.’” -promoted by Laura Belin

Ever since I began my own blog in January of 2018, Donald Trump’s “not-normal” finances have been in my head and have been discussed numerous times. Now that the media frenzy over his Covid diagnosis has abated somewhat, perhaps we can get back to Trump’s financial frauds. In light of the recent excellent reporting from the New York Times and others, this is a look back at what I got right and what I got wrong in some early posts about Trump’s wealth and taxes.

Dan Guild: The Senate incumbent massacre that took place in 1980 seems more relevant to this year’s election with each passing day. -promoted by Laura Belin

It is clear that Iowa (along with North Carolina) is ground zero in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. With Democratic control of the House almost a certainty given generic ballot polling, and Joe Biden the overwhelming favorite in the presidential race, I think the Iowa Senate campaign is the most important single race in the country. 

Without Iowa, a President Biden will find it difficult to get much accomplished (even if they do get to 50 seats in the Senate). With it, his margin to pass a public option for health insurance and act on climate change becomes much more manageable.

Dan Piller: The real problem for Trump in Iowa is that the big farm choir he thinks he is addressing has been reduced to something more like an ensemble. -promoted by Laura Belin

President Trump’s rally at the Des Moines International Airport on October 14 will no doubt be billed by the media, and probably Trump himself, as his bid to solidify the farmer support that was so crucial in his 2016 Iowa victory over Hillary Clinton.

Trump has put his (or more properly, the taxpayers’) money where his mouth is, bestowing more than $2 billion in direct aid to Iowa farmers this year alone, along with more than $1 billion the previous two years to soften the damage caused by Trump’s trade wars with China, Mexico, and Europe. Media reports in advance of his visit put the total package nationally to farmers this year at an eye-catching $46 billion, a number that won’t charm economically hard-pressed taxpayers in America’s cities.

The real political problem for Trump in Iowa is that the big farm choir he thinks he is addressing has been reduced to something more like an ensemble.

Herb Strentz reports on how central Iowa food banks are handling an unprecedented letter from the president in boxes for the needy. -promoted by Laura Belin

Halloween will soon be upon us, and there is a “trick or treat” aspect to a flap involving President Donald Trump. I’m not referring to his planned campaign rally at the Des Moines airport, but to a controversy surrounding aid to our nation’s hungry.

Here’s the deal: Given that COVID-19 has cost farmers much of their commercial market and exacerbated food insecurity for millions of people, the U.S. Department of Agriculture advanced a $4 billion Farmers to Families Food Box Program called the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

Here’s the misdeal: The boxes that program provides to food banks around the nation–and then to food pantries– now include a letter in English and Spanish and adorned by the usual grandiose signature of Donald J. Trump. He takes a measure of credit for the program and writes, “I prioritized sending nutritious food from our farmers to families in need throughout America.”

Bruce Lear: History won’t be kind to Donald Trump’s COVID cruise and his unmasked grim reality show during a pandemic. -promoted by Laura Belin

President Donald Trump was whisked away by helicopter from the White House lawn to Walter Reed Hospital to undergo treatment for COVID-19. It happened on live TV, and the American public met the news with an outpouring of concern and best wishes.

Trump responded with reckless contempt. For a long weekend in October, America seemed less like a superpower and more like an emerging dictatorship led by a man who cares more about public relations than protection.

Senator Chuck Grassley has no current plans to get tested for COVID-19, his staff told the Des Moines Register on October 2.

With three Republican senators now confirmed to have active coronavirus infections, Grassley should reconsider.

Ira Lacher‘s take on the bombshell news that President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19. -promoted by Laura Belin

Our moral makeup is really being tested this week. First, it was the prospect of forgiving during this season of atonement. Now, it’s whether we should feel sorry for someone who crashed to earth after jumping out of a plane while refusing to wear a parachute.

Mixed feelings are flowing like Clorox following the White House announcement that President Donald Trump has tested positive for COVID-19. The past 72 hours can be summed up in three words: “apparently,” “schadenfreude,” and “hubris.”

The U.S. House on October 1 approved a new version of a coronavirus relief package. The 214 to 207 vote split mostly along party lines, but Representative Cindy Axne (IA-03) was among eighteen Democrats to oppose the bill, along with all Republicans (roll call).

When the previous version of the so-called Heroes Act came before the House in May, Representative Abby Finkenauer (IA-01) joined Axne in voting no, while Representative Dave Loebsack (IA-02) supported the bill, as did most House Democrats. Today Finkenauer and Loebsack both voted with the majority of their caucus.

Statements from all three Iowa Democrats in Congress are after the jump. Republican Representative Steve King (IA-04) voted against the bill but didn’t post about it on his social media. His office has not put out a news release since a few days before King lost the June primary to State Senator Randy Feenstra.

President Donald Trump’s unhinged and at times frightening behavior during his first televised debate “worried” and “alarmed” some of his most influential allies. The next day, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Washington Republicans criticized the president’s failure to condemn white supremacists. Former Republican National Committee chair Marc Racicot even revealed that he had decided to vote for Democrat Joe Biden, after concluding Trump is “dangerous to the existence of the republic as we know it.”

True to form, Iowa Republicans offered no hint of dissent from the president this week. They either said nothing about Trump’s debate performance or put a positive spin on it.

State Auditor Rob Sand and Attorney General Tom Miller reminded Iowans on September 30 about state laws prohibiting the use of public property to promote candidates and attempts to intimidate or threaten voters.

Sand’s advisory was a response to an incident in the western Iowa town of Ute (Monona County). Miller’s comments did not refer to any specific event but appeared relevant to comments President Donald Trump made during the September 29 televised debate.

The first clash between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was indisputably a low point in the history of presidential debates. There were plenty of discouraging moments, when Trump’s incessant bullying left moderator Chris Wallace pleading with the leader of the free world to stop interrupting. More frightening, a sitting president refused to condemn white supremacy and encouraged his far-right militant supporters to “stand back and stand by.”

But near the end, Biden delivered one of the best answers I’ve ever seen him give in a debate.

Dan Guild reviews presidential polling since 1976 to gauge the impact of televised debates. -promoted by Laura Belin

Since the advent of television, politics and indeed history have occasionally turned on a few moments. Seldom do they last longer than 60 seconds (like wit, television values brevity above all else).

Senator Joe McCarthy, and the moment he led, were stopped when he was asked, “Have you no decency, sir?” During the Watergate hearings, Howard Baker summed up the entire scandal when he asked, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Ira Lacher reflects on a major theme of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, which begins at sunset on September 27. -promoted by Laura Belin

This is the season when Jews all over the world are bound to examine themselves and their actions, even their thoughts, emotions and feelings. During this time, culminating on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we are told that “for the sins of man against God, the Day of Atonement forgives. But for the sins of man against another man, the Day of Atonement does not forgive, until they have made peace with one another.”

I’ll be honest: This is the hardest year of my life to forgive.

Herb Strentz examines the impact of digitization on institutions valued by historians and archivists. -promoted by Laura Belin

Whatever the outcome of our presidential election, there will not be a traditional Donald Trump Library to inspire jokes about his presidency or to morph millions of scattershot tweets into scholarly insights.

Nor, for that matter, will there be a Barack Obama Library, once lawsuits over a proposed Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park are settled. Scheduled for groundbreaking in 2018, the proposed $500 million community center is mired in litigation over its location and other issues.

Regardless, we likely have seen the last of public presidential libraries under the aegis of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as fixed places where citizens, visitors and scholars can read through millions of books and billions of pages to better understand the challenges and promises of democracy. That is what President Franklin D. Roosevelt dreamed when he set the library idea in motion in 1939.

Dan Guild has “never seen anything like it. The president so dominates the landscape that senators don’t have a distinct political identity.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Selzer & Co. is out with a new Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom.  It found President Donald Trump tied with Democratic challenger Joe Biden, each supported by 47 percent of likely voters surveyed. 

Iowa is not considered likely to be decisive in the race for the Presidency. But it may be decisive in determining control of the U.S. Senate. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, for example, currently rates only two states as toss-ups: Iowa and North Carolina. Since they predict that the rest of the Senate will split 49-49, the importance of Iowa’s race is clear.

As Brianne Pfannenstiel reported for the Des Moines Register, both sides recognize just how important Iowa is: $155 million has been spent or has been committed to influence the outcome.

The Jewish new year began in the worst way possible on September 18, with the passing of one of the most influential Jewish Americans. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s work as an attorney and over decades of service as a judge, culminating in 27 years on the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley praised Ginsburg’s legacy in written statements, and Ernst offered prayers and an apology of sorts after her campaign sent out a gross fundraising appeal soon after the justice’s death was announced.

But words in a press release have no lasting value. Iowa’s senators have one chance to honor “the notorious RBG”: by letting the voters decide who should appoint her successor.

Kay Pence is Vice President of the Iowa Alliance for Retired Americans. -promoted by Laura Belin

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst is no longer working for Iowans. She is working at the behest of President Donald Trump, no matter what he says or does. She has become a puppet to Trump no matter how low he sinks, voting with the president more than 91 percent of the time and following his lead to attack our healthcare and defund Social Security.

The Iowa Alliance for Retired Americans recently invited Ernst and her Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield to virtual forums celebrating the anniversaries of Medicare and Social Security. I was not surprised when Ernst failed to show up for either forum, because she has such a dismal record on both issues.  

Dan Guild: Donald Trump has positive ratings on handling the economy. But he’s staking his campaign on a “law and order” message. -promoted by Laura Belin

Politics can be as complicated as you like. You can build statistical models to calculate the odds of a candidate winning. Complicated ideological positions can be constructed precisely delineating what is right and wrong.

Most of the time, politics isn’t that complicated.

Herb Strentz reviews recent comments from Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Governor Kim Reynolds. -promoted by Laura Belin

Sea-going metaphors and idioms hardly reflect life in Iowa, but may be useful in considering the double whammy that’s hit us with COVID-19 and Trump.

At least that drives this take on our U.S. senators and governor during past few weeks.  As one idiom would have it, they are rearranging the deck chairs aboard Iowa’s political and virus-ridden “Titanic.”

Ira Lacher: This is about refusing to do anything that could have saved your neighbor from dying. -promoted by Laura Belin

Imagine if, on December 8, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt had told the American people, on the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor:

“There’s this little thing we’re having with Japan. But it’s fine, and it’s going to go away. It’ll be like a miracle.”

Or if on September 12, 2001, President George W. Bush had said:

“Shame on the lamestream news media for reporting fake news that passenger planes were hijacked by terrorists yesterday and crashed intentionally into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.”

Tens of thousands of employees at Iowa’s state universities will have their payroll taxes withheld as usual this fall, despite a recent executive order from President Donald Trump.

Trump moved last month to suspend payroll taxes from September 1 through December 31, 2020. Affected employees would see slightly higher paychecks for the next four months, but would have lower take-home pay from January through April 2021 as employers withhold double the amount for payroll taxes.

Josh Lehman, communications director for the Iowa Board of Regents, told Bleeding Heartland on September 9,

When Iowans begin voting on October 5, they will see nine tickets for president and vice president at the top of the ballot.

The most controversial campaign may be that of Kanye West, widely seen as a stalking horse for President Donald Trump and a gravy train for Republican campaign consultants. He has been knocked off the ballot in some states but survived two objections to his candidacy in Iowa last week.

West’s inclusion reflects well on Iowa’s ballot access policies but poorly on the Republican operatives who got his name in front of voters.