Is Iowa Becoming Even More Republican?

 

Governor Kim Reynolds won 95 counties and reelection

Iowa turned red in 2014 after years as a purple state, and Republican control of the state endured what was a pretty good year nationally for Democrats in 2018. Governor Reynolds, winning her first election, won majorities in 88 of Iowa's 99 counties, and the Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature. This year, notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump presidency, and the ongoing decline of most of the state, Reynolds won 95 counties and Republicans gains in both houses neared supermajority levels (with a handful of races still to be decided). All six Iowa members of the U.S. Congress are now Republican. Are Iowa's recent Republican tendencies getting even stronger?

I will, with due caution given limited data, say yes. There's variation across election years and indeed across races, so there's no certainty that Democrats won't do better statewide in 2024 than they did this year. But all indications are that Republicans have increased their hold on the rural vote, and at least this year made substantial gains in some urban counties.

After the 2018 election I looked at the ten most populous counties in Iowa, which accounted for a majority of the state's overall population as well as 74.5 percent of statewide job growth. The story seemed to be that large urban counties were Democratic to the extent that they were also high in population and job growth, job growth, and (by Iowa standards) non-white population. Extending the analysis  the following summer to all Iowa counties highlighted the difference between growing and non-growing counties. Reynolds won over 60 percent of the vote in the 70 counties that had lost population since 2010, while barely winning 40 percent of the vote in the seven counties that grew faster than the U.S. as a whole. 

Curiously, the number of votes cast in the two groups of counties was roughly the same. With Democrats strong in growing areas, and Republicans strong in non-growing areas, time seemed to be on the Democrats' side. While time may in fact be on the Democrats' side, so far the numbers are trending the opposite way.

We're down to six counties that grew faster than the U.S. as a whole; all are large by Iowa standards. They include Polk, Story, Dallas and Warren counties in the Des Moines-Ames area, as well as Johnson and Linn counties in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City area. (Included in the 2018 fast-growing group, but omitted here, is little Jefferson county in southeast Iowa. After showing population growth every year in annual U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the 2020 census showed a 7 percent decline there since 2010, an anomaly I discussed here.) Scott County (Davenport) and Dubuque County (Dubuque) are other large Iowa counties that grew faster than the overall state population increase in the 2010s.

Most of these eight large and growing counties showed pretty consistent partisanship across statewide elections from 2016-2022. Johnson County (Iowa City) is by far the most Democratic each year, while the suburban Des Moines counties of Dallas and Warren are the most Republican. The slower-growing urban counties of Dubuque and Scott, on the other hand, both shifted substantially to the Republicans in the 2022 gubernatorial race.

PCT R/D BY COUNTY, 2016-2022

COUNTY (growth 10-20)	2016 PRES (Trump/Clinton)	2018 GOV (Reynolds/Hubbell)	2020 PRES (Trump/Biden)	2022 GOV (Reynolds/DeJear)
Johnson +16.8	29.5-70.5	27.1-72.9	27.9-72.1	29.7-70.3
Story +10.0	43.1-56.9	39.7-60.3	41.1-58.9	44.9-55.1
Polk +14.3	43.8-56.2	40.7-59.3	42.2-57.8	46.0-54.0
Linn +9.0	45.1-54.9	42.8-57.2	43.0-57.0	47.4-52.6
Scott +5.7	49.2-50.8	48.2-51.8	48.2-51.8	55.7-44.3
Dallas +50.7	55.2-44.8	51.7-48.3	51.0-49.0	55.9-44.1
Dubuque +6.0	50.7-49.3	49.3-50.7	48.5-51.5	58.3-41.7
Warren +13.4	58.7-41.3	53.9-46.1	58.6-41.4	63.2-36.8
All Others -1.2	62.8-37.2	58.9-41.1	62.8-37.2	68.6-31.4
IOWA +4.7	55.0-45.0	51.4-48.6	54.1-45.9	59.5-40.5
Sioux +6.4	86.5-13.5	86.8-13.2	83.9-16.1	90.9-09.1
Dickinson +6.2 (Iowa Great Lakes area)	68.8-31.2	64.0-36.0	67.0-33.0	74.5-25.5
Madison +5.5	66.7-33.3	63.4-36.6	67.5-32.5	71.9-28.1
Clarke +5.0	64.9-35.1	64.7-35.3	68.2-31.8	75.2-24.8

The rest of the state outside these eight counties showed a pretty steady increase in support for Republicans. Collectively, they were 7+ percentage points above statewide in 2016 and 2018, and around 9 percentage points in 2020 and 2022. This holds true even where their population has grown, as witness the strongly Republican Sioux County in northwestern Iowa becoming even more strongly Republican through this period.

The House of Representatives races in these years also showed consistency across large urban counties, but Republican shifts in the rest of the state (including, again, Dubuque and Scott counties). Note that Sioux County, with a population of about 35000, can produce Republican majorities that swamp Democratic majorities from larger counties, particularly Story which is in the same U.S. House district.

CONGRESSIONAL VOTE DIFFERENTIAL BY COUNTY, 2016-2022

COUNTY	2016 HR	2018 HR	2020 HR	2022 HR
Johnson	+27305	+32012	+32028	+27349
Story	+4815	+14095	+7555	+3613
Polk	+271	+33473	+39247	+26498
Linn	+3361	+16979	+13148	+9907
Scott	+6448	+9270	+5516	+3417
Dallas	+9828	+2496	+2540	+1575
Dubuque	+4490	+3077	+278	+2904
Warren	+5922	+2415	+3775	+4529
All Others	+161821 (59.5-40.5)	+51657 (53.7-46.3)	+188604 (60.5-39.5)	+206225 (65.8-34.2)
IOWA	+139861 (54.7-58.2)	+52338 (48.0-52.0)	+97147 (53.0-47.0)	+151283 (56.3-44.7)
Sioux	+11846	+7142	+13271	+11384
Dickinson	+2884	+745	+3630	+3727
Madison	+3372	+2160	+2731	+2492
Clarke	+321	+414	+1073	+1175

This is admittedly rough analysis, focusing on the dimension of growing vs. not-growing areas, and using results from a relative handful of races. There are other dimensions to consider, including urban/rural, or race. Iowa has a strikingly low nonwhite population, but Democrats tend to do better in counties like Black Hawk (Waterloo) which is "only" 78 percent white. (Even then, Black Hawk went Democratic in the 2022 congressional race but Republican in the gubernatorial race.)

It does suggest that Republican strength overall in the state is growing, with the growth concentrated in shrinking rural areas and possibly slower-growing urban areas. This is consistent with national analysis by The Washington Post, which found among Republican gains in 2022, "many of their largest swings" were in districts Trump won in the 2020 presidential election (Keating, Stevens and Mourtoupalas 2022). Of course, they are looking shifts over two years, whereas I am looking over six years and trying to spot or at least deduce longer-term trends.

So, for the time being, politics in Iowa looks like more of the same, maybe bolder. The state appears to be continuing its shift towards the Republican Party, but not uniformly, so that divisions within the state are increasing. "Whatever it takes, whatever it costs, they are fundamentally trying to change who we are as a country," Reynolds said of Democrats at a Sioux City rally headlined by former President Trump. To the extent that she and the legislature are only here for those who she called "the real Iowa," this will not be a comfortable state for those who are in any way different.

DATA SOURCES: 

Elections 2016-18-20: https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/pdf/2020/general/canvsummary.pdf

Governor 22: cnn.com/election/2022/results/iowa

House 22: https://www.usatoday.com/elections/results/2022-11-08/us-house/iowa/

SEE ALSO

"Small Towns, Rural Areas, and State Legislatures," 11 June 2019

"Election 2018 and What Happens Next," 20 November 2018

"Turn Red For What," 5 November 2014