Fifth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.
Matthew P. Thornburg is an associate professor at Misericordia University who studies elections. His mother’s side of the family hails from Greene and O’Brien counties, and he maintains close ties to Iowa and its politics.
In precincts lying in the path of the Summit Pipeline, Randy Feenstra underperformed the rest of his district slightly. However, most voters there and elsewhere in the fourth Congressional district remained straight ticket Republicans. Much of Feenstra’s mild underperformance arose from voters in O’Brien County, home county of his Republican primary opponent Kevin Virgil.
Carbon dioxide pipelines remain the issue Iowa Republicans wish would go away. While most political issues in the state are subsumed into the greater red vs. blue polarization of the country—where Republicans in Iowa enjoy the advantage–CO2 pipelines create an intraparty split between the Iowa GOP establishment and some in the party’s conservative wing.
Ground zero for that tension is Iowa’s fourth Congressional district, where CO2 pipelines were a prominent issue in both the Republican primary and general election.
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