Fourth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections.

As ticket-splitting has declined in recent election cycles, few Iowa candidates have managed to win where the other party has a big advantage at the top of the ticket. So it was in Iowa’s 2024 Congressional races: former President Donald Trump outpolled Vice President Kamala Harris in all four U.S. House districts, which helped GOP incumbents hold off their Democratic opponents.

But one challenger massively outperformed Harris, and Trump barely pulled one underachieving incumbent over the line.

Election analyst Drew Savicki was first to publish the 2024 presidential vote and swing in Iowa’s U.S. House districts. I later confirmed his calculations, using unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State.

Second in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections. This post has been updated with unofficial results as of November 8.

The successful Republican effort to knock Libertarians off the ballot in three U.S. House districts may have influenced the outcome in at least one of them.

All three affected Libertarian candidates—Nicholas Gluba in the first Congressional district, Marco Battaglia in the third, and Charles Aldrich in the fourth—indicated that they would continue to run as write-in candidates. Unofficial results show write-in votes for Iowa’s four U.S. House races this year totaled 3,616—about 0.23 percent of the 1,602,409 ballots cast for a Congressional candidate.

When Libertarian candidates have been on the ballot for recent Iowa Congressional elections, they have typically received 2-3 percent of the vote.

AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE FIRST DISTRICT

In IA-01, unofficial results show Republican incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by 796 votes (49.98 percent to 49.79 percent). Bohannan has not conceded, and the race has not been called. But it’s unlikely that enough provisional ballots remain to be counted for her to overtake Miller-Meeks. Iowa no longer counts absentee ballots that arrive after election day.

The last few weeks could hardly have gone worse for the Libertarian Party of Iowa. Republican activists successfully forced the party’s three U.S. House candidates off the ballot, leaving Nicholas Gluba, Marco Battaglia, and Charles Aldrich to run write-in campaigns in the first, third, and fourth Congressional districts.

Meanwhile, a crowded field of presidential candidates imperils Libertarian prospects to retain major-party status in Iowa for the next election cycle.

National Democratic groups are investing significant funds in Iowa’s first Congressional district race, suggesting they believe Christina Bohannan has a solid chance to defeat two-term Republican incumbent Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

The House Majority PAC, a super-PAC connected to House Democratic leadership, has reserved another $2.3 million in television advertising time for the IA-01 race, Ally Mutnick reported for Politico on September 9. Those funds will be divided among the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Quad Cities markets, which collectively reach seventeen of the district’s 20 counties.* Mutnick noted the super-PAC “reserved just $350,000 in that district in July.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which also spends heavily to influence U.S. House races, has already reserved $1,551,000 in tv air time in Des Moines, $534,000 in Cedar Rapids, and $438,000 in Davenport. Much of the DCCC’s Des Moines market buy will be directed toward the third Congressional district, where Democrat Lanon Baccam is challenging first-term Republican incumbent Zach Nunn.

The planned spending is a huge contrast to the 2022 cycle, when Democratic-aligned groups spent less than $100,000 on the IA-01 race, while GOP-aligned groups spent more than $2.7 million on messaging that supported Miller-Meeks or opposed Bohannan. Ad reservations on this scale indicate that internal Democratic polling shows Miller-Meeks is vulnerable.

Libertarian candidates have qualified for the general election ballot in three of Iowa’s four U.S. House districts.

A state party convention in early June nominated Nicholas Gluba in the first Congressional district, Marco Battaglia in the third, and Charles Aldrich in the fourth.

All three candidates spoke to Bleeding Heartland about their goals and priorities at the state capitol on July 29. That was the first day federal candidates who did not compete in a major-party primary could submit nominating papers to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office for the November 5 election.

Marco Battaglia announced on June 16 that he will run for Congress in Iowa’s third district as a Libertarian. His platform includes “promoting agricultural and medical freedom,” combating inflation with “sound money and sound economic reasoning,” and being “a voice for peace and prosperity.”

A longtime resident of Des Moines, Battaglia was the Libertarian nominee for Iowa attorney general in 2018 and for lieutenant governor in 2022, on a ticket with Rick Stewart. Libertarians regained major-party status in Iowa following that election, because Stewart received more than 2 percent of the vote for governor.

A Libertarian convention on June 8 nominated Battaglia, along with two other U.S. House candidates: Lone Tree city council member Nicholas Gluba in the first district, and Charles Aldrich in the fourth district. Aldrich was the Libertarian nominee for Iowa’s U.S. Senate seat in 2016; he later was the party’s 2018 candidate in IA-04 and ran for an Iowa House seat in 2022.