Digging deep into Iowa's election results
"KHOI's Capitol Week," November 11 edition
We wanted to dig deeper: who underperformed and over performed the top of their party’s ticket? How did Iowa’s swing toward Trump compare to the rest of the country? What can this year’s results tell us about prospects for 2026? Which legislative races are headed for recounts?
This is the most comprehensive overview you’ll find in podcast form. Over at Bleeding Heartland, I’m publishing more takes on Iowa’s state and federal elections. All are tagged "lessons of 2024.”
The sound file for Monday night’s radio show is at the top of this message. You can also subscribe to “KHOI’s Capitol Week” on any podcast platform. The full archive (going back to February 2021) is available on KHOI’s website.
Here’s what Spencer and I covered in the latest show.
Presidential race
Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris more comprehensively than anyone was expecting. Unofficial results show him ahead by more than 215,000 votes—a big improvement on his 2016 and 2020 showings, and a larger margin than Barack Obama’s win in 2008.
Turnout was relatively high, at around 1.65 million. That’s slightly lower than 2020, but substantially higher than 2012 or 2016.
Trump carried 94 out of 99 counties, flipping Scott County (Quad Cities area).
Biggest red flags for Democrats: Trump was the first GOP presidential candidate to win Scott County since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Harris carried Black Hawk County (Waterloo/Cedar Falls), but with less than 50 percent of the vote. Trump expanded his lead in Dubuque County, and as Ed Tibbetts noted, improved his vote margin all along the Mississippi.
Iowa swung toward Trump by about 5 points, slightly less than the nationwide swing of around 6 percent. But remember: our baseline from 2020 was far to the right of the national electorate.
My big takeaway: Iowa is definitely a red state now. That’s not to say Democrats can never win another election here, but we can’t look at the 2016 or 2020 results as an aberration.
What went wrong with the Selzer poll?
It’s one of the most common questions I’ve heard over the past week. Any pollster can get unlucky with a sample that doesn’t reflect the voters who turn up. The Des Moines Register’s editors and Ann Selzer are reviewing the data to see what went wrong. Here are my thoughts:
Obviously Selzer did not deliberately cook the numbers. I also don’t believe the shocking poll result inspired huge numbers of Republicans to vote. The Iowa GOP had a well-funded turnout operation, starting months before election day.
My best guess is that the main issue was Selzer’s longstanding practice not to weight for partisanship, recalled past presidential vote, or education level. There are good reasons not to do that, and in past election cycles, her methods have helped her pick up on movement that other pollsters were missing. But as partisan preference is increasingly correlated with whether a voter has a college degree, not weighting for education could cause problems.
There were warning signs before this election that for whatever reason, Selzer’s sample had too many Democrats, too many 2020 Biden voters, and/or too many college-educated voters in the sample. The Congressional district-level generic ballot numbers were implausibly optimistic for Democrats. It also seemed unlikely that Iowans over age 65 favored Harris.
We don’t know the details about who turned out to vote in this election. When the Iowa Secretary of State’s office publishes its statewide statistical report in January, we’ll know more about turnout rates for each age cohort, gender, and partisan affiliation.
A look at the Congressional races
First, I explained why I expect Mariannette Miller-Meeks to win the first Congressional district, even though the Associated Press had not called the IA-01 race as of November 11. Then I wanted to take a look at who did better or worse than we would expect, based on the Trump/Harris numbers in their district. You can find more details and numbers in this Bleeding Heartland post.
Miller-Meeks may be one of the worst-performing GOP incumbents in the country, barely coming out ahead in a district Trump carried by more than 8 points. Miller-Meeks underperformed the top of the ticket by about 4 points in 2020 and is extremely lucky that Trump improved his showing across southeast Iowa and Republicans knocked the Libertarian contender off the ballot.
Christina Bohannan greatly outperformed Harris, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn she was one of the strongest Democratic challengers for U.S. House on that metric. One of her biggest weakness was the continued Democratic erosion in “micropolitan” counties, containing cities with populations between 10,000 and 30,000. I have a post in progress about this;
Zach Nunn won a second term by keeping down Democratic challenger Lanon Baccam’s margin in Polk County, and doing well everywhere else. But he didn’t do substantially better than Trump, so I don’t see it as a commanding victory.
The lack of a third-party candidate on the ballot in IA-03 certainly helped Nunn but doesn’t look decisive to me.
I expect national Democrats to target Iowa’s first and third districts in 2026, as long as strong challengers enter the race.
In the less competitive Congressional races, Ashley Hinson outperformed Trump in IA-02 and even carried Black Hawk County. It was a tough slog for Sarah Corkery, who didn’t get any support from national Democrats. Independent candidate Jody Puffett received just 1.3 percent of the vote.
Democrats might target IA-02 if it becomes an open seat, but only if it appears that the Democratic candidate can raise a lot of money.
No surprises in IA-04: Randy Feenstra was re-elected by a roughly two-to-one margin. Democrat Ryan Melton slightly improved on his 2022 showing, but the results were comparable to the Trump/Harris numbers. Turnout was noticeably lower here than in the other three Congressional races.
Other Congressional news
Hinson took herself out of the running for the fourth-ranking House Republican leadership position. Many people thought she was angling for that position, since she spent a lot of time this fall campaigning for Republicans in other states. I believe she is gearing up to run for U.S. Senate in the next few years.
Other Iowans possibly in contention for Trump administration jobs include Matt Whitaker at the Justice Department. Senator Joni Ernst has been floated as a possible secretary of defense. I explained why I’m very skeptical Trump would appoint her to lead the Pentagon.
If Ernst left the Senate, Governor Kim Reynolds would appoint a successor to serve through 2026, when the seat is on the ballot. Hinson would be a leading contender for that appointment. Alternatively, Reynolds could appoint a placeholder, allowing Republicans to hold a GOP primary on a level playing field.
Assuming Ernst stays in the Senate and seeks re-election in 2026, I believe Hinson will run for Chuck Grassley’s Senate seat in 2028.
State legislative races
Recounts are coming in at least three Iowa legislative races: Senate district 14 (Democrat Sarah Trone Garriott leads Mark Hanson by 19 votes), Senate district 20 (Republican Mike Pike leads Nate Boulton by 43 votes), and House district 98 (Democrat Monica Kurth leads Nathan Ramker by 47 votes). I explained the timeline for recounts. Normally I would expect these leads to hold up in all races, but the Dallas and Scott County auditors have had some issues in recent years, so I don’t rule out the possibility that some ballots were never counted, or were counted twice.
We know two senators lost their re-election races: Republican Brad Zaun and Democrat Eric Giddens. If Trone Garriott and Pike end up winning, that would give Republicans a 35-15 Iowa Senate majority, up from 34-16 for the past two years.
The Iowa House is still on track to have a 67-33 Republican majority, up from 64-36 currently. How did Republicans do it?
Trump clearly pulled a lot of candidates over the line, and the GOP outspent Democrats in most of the battleground races.
Republicans targeted six Democratic-held House seats and won four, defeating incumbents Molly Buck in House district 41 (Ankeny), Sue Cahill in House district 52 (Marshalltown), and Chuck Isenhart in House district 72 (part of Dubuque). They also picked up the open House district 59 (Mason City).
Two House Democrats were re-elected, even as the GOP targeted their races and Trump carried their districts: Josh Turek in House district 20 (a huge overperformance by him in Council Bluffs) and Heather Matson in House district 42 (Ankeny).
I mentioned that only four Democrats won Iowa House races in districts that voted for Trump: Turek, Matson, Monica Kurth (House district 98, headed for a recount), and JD Scholten in House district 1 (Sioux City). I learned after the show that there is a fifth: Rick Olson was re-elected in House district 39 (east side of Des Moines).
I was surprised Trump carried the Kurth and Scholten districts, because Joe Biden got around 53 percent of the vote in those areas in 2020.
My calculations indicate that Eddie Andrews will be the only Iowa House Republican elected in a district that voted for Harris (House district 43, Johnston).
House Democrats targeted three Republicans in the Des Moines metro area, but Andrews, David Young (House district 28), and Bill Gustoff (House district 40) all made it through.
If Trone Garriott’s lead holds up, she will be the only Iowa state senator to win in a district that voted for the other party’s presidential candidate.
Lots of other Democratic candidates did better than Harris, but they didn’t do well enough to win. Likewise, Zaun did much better than Trump in Senate district 22, but he couldn’t overcome the Democratic advantage there.
A few other warning signs for Democrats: Kurth is in recount territory, and the party barely held onto the open Iowa Senate district 36 (in Dubuque, where Pam Jochum retired).
Other legislative news
Voters elected Iowa’s first transgender legislator when Democrat Aime Wichtendahl won in the open House district 80, covering part of Linn County.
A few months ago, I wrote about the record number of LGBTQ candidates running for the Iowa legislature. Of the ten candidates I profiled, three won: Republican incumbent Austin Harris, Democratic incumbent Elinor Levin, and Wichtendahl.
We don’t know the final number of women in the Iowa legislature, pending recounts. It may slightly decline. The number of Black, Latino, and Asian lawmakers will remain unchanged from the past two years.
House Democrats re-elected Jennifer Konfrst as minority leader despite last week’s losses.
Final note: Iowans retained all 69 judges on the ballot. Iowa Supreme Court Justice David May’s performance (about 63 percent voted yes) was lower than what is typical for Iowa retention elections, but comfortably above 50 percent.
The two constitutional amendments, related to voting and the line of gubernatorial succession, passed easily.
Thank you for reading or listening! Spencer and I will be back next week.
Thank you for your outrage at the Potluck!!!!
Thanks for this...very helpful. So grateful for you!