In the ever-shifting 2020 election cycle, one crucial state, with six electoral votes, a competitive Senate election, and three competitive House races, has proven the most difficult to gauge. The Hawkeye State, Iowa, has a political situation unlike any other state. The state is known for its farms and ruralness, has a high rate of gun ownership, and is nearly 90% white, which should make it a solid red state. However, polls show quite consistently that more Iowans disapprove of Donald Trump than approve of him, and that Republicans and Democrats are closely matched in the state’s Presidential, Senate, and House elections. Given how important the state is this cycle, it’s important to cut through these mixed signals and investigate what’s really going on in The Hawkeye State.
A Political Tour Of Iowa
If you want to understand Iowa, then you have to understand that Iowa isn’t as rural as you were told. Iowa has 99 counties and about 3.16 million people within its borders, but over 52% of Iowa’s population lives in its ten most populous counties. Iowa is a society centered around its unique small cities just as much as its small towns. There’s Des Moines, the state’s capital city and key metropolitan area with a diverse economy. Like most cities, it leans blue. There are the progressive college towns of Ames and Iowa City. You have the heavily working-class cities of Waterloo, Davenport, Dubuque, Council Bluffs, Cedar Rapids, and Sioux City, that are full of manufacturing, food processing, and ethanol production plants. While these cities vary in who they supported in 2012 and 2016, they all swung right a decent amount between those two years, so they’ll be the most important parts of the state this year. The previously mentioned Cedar Rapids and Council Bluffs also have a large technology industry. Dubuque has a large German Catholic population that leans socially conservative but is open to voting for populist Democrats.
That isn’t to say rural areas aren’t important in Iowa. Most of the state’s rural population is also working class. A lot of people either work in a plant/factory, or in the agriculture industry, farming grain, grazing beef, or working in a slaughterhouse. Factories are a more common sight in eastern Iowa, especially in the Driftless Area in the northeastern corner of the state. Farms are much more common in western Iowa.
Iowa holds the first presidential nominating contest every four years: the famed Iowa caucuses. People in every neighborhood and town gather at a local public place every four years to discuss who should be their party’s presidential nominee and to try to convince their neighbors to vote for their favorite candidate. These caucuses are one of the most important events of an election year. They’ve resulted in a unique political culture, as Iowans feel it is their responsibility and duty to “get it right”. They research the candidates and the issues, go to campaign events, and eventually pinpoint their favorite candidate and vote for them, regardless of what people outside of their communities think. As a result, Iowa’s voters are some of the smartest, well-informed, and independent-minded voters in the nation. They are more likely to change their mind about who to vote for if events call for it than others.
The Iowan Pendelum
Iowa was ground zero for the white working class shift towards Trump. In 2012, Obama won the state by 6 points and won 38 counties. In 2016, Trump won by 9 points, a 15 point swing, limiting Clinton to only six county wins in the college towns and some big(ger) cities. Trump flipped Sioux City and Dubuque. In the rural areas, counties Obama won with 50-59% became counties Trump won by 50-59%. Counties won by Romney 50-59% became counties Trump won by 60-69%, and so on.
So what happened here? Before Trump, many Iowa voters were partial to voting for Obama and the Democrats. Working-class Iowans have relied on unions, government regulations, and/or social welfare programs to ensure they aren’t overworked or underpaid for their hard work. But there were several hidden sentiments among these voters. They felt left behind by a federal government that seemed to prefer political games to looking out for working Americans. They resented the foreign trade deals that de-valued American labor. It’s probable that a lot of the white-working class Obama voters in Iowa leaned conservative on social issues anyway, and they felt uneasy about how public and media opinions were shifting on those issues. They were just economically liberal at the time, and that’s how they voted. With the decline of industrial America, much of Iowa’s working class found their economic situations increasingly dire. The outlook was cynical.
So when a political outsider named Donald Trump comes along, promising to look out for the “forgotten American”, to re-negotiate or pull out of trade deals hurting American workers, and to “drain the swamp”, he caught a lot of people’s attention in Iowa. That attention turned to enthusiasm, the first time many Iowans felt enthusiastic about a candidate. The mentality was that if the federal government’s disfunction was a wall, Donald Trump’s election would be the sledgehammer. Many considered him to be more moderate than Hillary Clinton, who was considered the embodiment of DC elitism and disfunction. People broke for Trump in the end. This wasn’t just a trend unique to Iowa. Trump’s improvement among working-class voters in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania won him the presidency.
Has Trump Lived Up to Expectation For These Voters?
Yes and no. Trump has appointed conservative-leaning justices to the Supreme Court, pulled out of some international deals that his supporters believe hurt America or American interests, like the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Nuclear Deal. He’s not one to mince words when calling out liberal politicians or media personalities for antics that he believes unfair. He’s a conservative culture warrior, and socially conservative Iowans continue to like him.
But for the moderate Trump voters that were more lukewarm on him, he has probably disappointed. The economic situation for most working-class Iowans, especially those without college degrees, has hardly improved. Most respected economic pundits or metrics will tell you that income inequality and the cost of living both have increased in Iowa. While the economic situation for most businesses had probably been improving before COVID-19, based on stocks and GDP growth, it wasn’t translating to their workers, as most wages were stagnant. While Iowa never issued a stay-at-home order, the COVID-19 pandemic has still compounded Iowan’s economic issues. Meanwhile, the federal government has become, if anything, less functional. The Democratic-controlled House stands in opposition to nearly all Trump-supported, conservative bills, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to bring up many House-passed bills for Senate votes. Whether or not all of this is Trump’s fault is another conversation, but the fact is that people usually vote on their feelings, their suspicions, about how things are. If people’s economic situation has worsened, they become less inclined to vote for the incumbent party. Americans face the more sobering realities of having a political outsider like Trump in office, who despite warnings and suggested actions from top government officials, didn’t make it a priority to contain COVID-19 in America until it was too late.
In this upcoming election, Biden, not Trump, will probably be viewed by more people as the moderate candidate in the election. The Trump presidency hasn’t been friendly to the unions and work regulations Iowans favor. Trump’s trade war with China and the tariffs on agricultural products hit Iowa very hard economically. Iowa farmers and manufacturers were more or less blocked from selling some of their products to a country containing 1/7th of the world’s population for a time. While the trade war is de-escalating, the economic slump caused by it in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors is far from over. Trump being the first Republican president to be impeached is not a good look for someone who promised to drain the swamp.
The news isn’t all bad for Donald Trump. While Trump hasn’t succeeded in gaining the approval of a majority of Iowans, he has succeeded in portraying Democrats as out-of-touch elitists who have lost sight of American values. We saw this play out in the 2018 governor election. Democrat Fred Hubbell, a life insurance company president, who spent millions of his own dollars on his own candidacy, still came up 3-points short against charismatic incumbent Republican Kim Reynolds. Hubbell always “had it easy”; he simply inherited the multi-million business his great-great-grandfather built in the 1860’s. He flipped a few rural counties, but by and large he failed to repair inroads with middle and working-class Iowans.
On the same night, Democrats scored two key victories in Iowa’s House elections. Abby Finkenauer, the daughter of an iron welder and a state legislator who was a fierce advocate for worker’s rights and unions, flipped district 1. Cindy Axne, an education activist who worked in state government helping many different state agencies deliver government services, flipped district 3. Both districts voted for Trump.
What’s Next?
Donald Trump has made the average Iowan more conservative and more suspicious of Democrats. It’s unlikely Democrats will reach Obama’s level of strength in most rural areas anytime soon, but they may have room to grow in the urban areas. Democrat’s success in Iowa depends on how much their candidates can relate to middle and working-class Iowans. Candidates should show an understanding of the slate of social welfare programs available to Iowans, who can use them, and how they work. They should know what it’s like to live in the middle or lower class in Iowa, perhaps as a blue-collar worker, a non-profit community helper, or someone that makes government work. Most of all, they should share Iowan’s frustration with the federal government as it is. If working-class and/or Iowans don’t feel a Democrat is or was “one of them”, that candidate will be rejected.
There’s a particular Senate candidate I feel fits this description pretty well. Democrat Theresa Greenfield. She won her primary by a larger than expected margin, has raised a lot of money, and has been praised by local and national political observers alike for her campaign skills. Greenfield, who grew up on a family farm in Minnesota, was made a widow far too soon after her husband was electrocuted to death in a workplace accident, making her a single Mom. An assortment of Social Security and union benefits were what saved her family from poverty. The centerpiece of her campaign is protecting these benefits and improving public education. All polls taken this year show Greenfield leading incumbent Republican Joni Ernst. Still, Ernst will be no easy opponent. She also grew up on a farm, and is an Iraq War veteran to boot. Her style of anti-establishment conservatism struck a chord with people in her first campaign in 2014, and she was elected by a wide margin. Many say now that Ernst has lost her touch after six years in Washington, as she is a natural ally of President Trump. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind this race is on the playing field. It’s very possible Greenfield could do better than Biden, surprising given that she was a nobody a year ago. Iowa’s Senate Race moves from Likely to Lean Republican. If Greenfield wins, Democrats have probably flipped the Senate.
For now, I am keeping Iowa’s 4 electoral votes as Likely Trump. While Iowans have reasons to not like Trump, they also have reasons to not like Biden. Biden has become very pro-gun control over this campaign. He seems to be designing his campaign to appeal more to metropolitan America and its more center-left social values, as opposed to rural America and its generally more grounded in tradition value system. His common gaffes and lack of charisma in front of a crowd may give the state’s many independent voters pause. He didn’t even get 20% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. We also can’t forget how Trump captivated and excited a lot of people here in 2016. A lot of people here are still on his side and think like him. Voters here, especially in rural areas, many not blame Trump for the worsening situation in the country. They may blame the “corrupt, obstructionist Democrats” for the dysfunction in Washington, Trump’s impeachment, and the COVID-19 lockdown. Iowa has been spared the worst of the COVID-19 crisis so far, so voters here might not think it’s a big issue. Biden hasn’t led Trump in a single Iowa poll this year. He’ll pull a few independent voters from Trump, but he’s probably not exciting enough to win here. Good thing for him is that he doesn’t have to win Iowa to get to 270 electoral votes.
Two weeks ago, I moved IA-2 to Lean Democratic and IA-4 to Safe Republican. Check out the article for more information.
Finally, I’ve decided to keep districts 1 and 3 in Toss-Up. Republicans have put up quality candidates to try to flip both districts, and the two Democratic congresswomen have proven pretty solid, although the incumbents can no longer claim to be political outsiders. Both districts are also a Toss-Up on the presidential level. If Republicans are to have a net gain in the House, they’d probably pick off one or both of these districts.
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