Election results thread: Dark days ahead

Polls just closed in Iowa. Considered a heavy favorite to win the electoral college, Hillary Clinton is in serious danger of losing the presidency. Results from swing states to the east suggest that Donald Trump is outperforming Mitt Romney in heavily white working-class and rural areas. That doesn’t bode well for our state, even if early vote numbers suggested Clinton might have a chance.

Most of the battleground state House and Senate districts are overwhelmingly white. Republicans have been able to outspend Democrats in almost all of the targeted races. We could be looking at a GOP trifecta in Iowa for the first time since 1998.

I’ll be updating this post regularly as Iowa results come in. The Secretary of State will post results here.

No surprise: the U.S. Senate race was called for Chuck Grassley immediately. He led all the late opinion polls by comfortable double-digit margins.

The rest of the updates are after the jump.

9:15 UPDATE: Polk County results are coming in quickly. Heather Matson fell short in House district 28 (part of Ankeny). Chris Hagenow is leading Jennifer Konfrst and Peter Cownie is ahead of Claire Celsi in House districts 43 and 42, respectively.

Sheriff Bill McCarthy is ahead of Dan Charleston, thankfully. If you missed it, Siouxsie’s guest post on Charleston and the “constitutional sheriff” movement is well worth reading.

9:30 UPDATE: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire are looking dicey. Ohio has gone for Trump, and North Carolina and Florida look nearly certain to go to Trump.

White people are voting for Trump in larger margins than expected, which is very bad news for Iowa Democrats.

Jim Mowrer is barely ahead in Polk County. He needed a huge margin there to have any chance of winning the third Congressional district.

10:15 UPDATE: Trump could win Michigan and Wisconsin. Clinton’s lead may not hold up in Pennsylvania. This is far worse than any doomsday scenario I could have imagined.

All of the competitive U.S. Senate races are falling in place for Republicans. Russ Feingold lost to Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. Trump and a Republican Congress could do tremendous damage to the country.

Iowa Democrats are on track to lose four or five state Senate seats. Republicans will control all branches of state government.

David Young already gave a victory speech in IA-03.

10:30 UPDATE: Very little good news around the country, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio lost his re-election bid in Arizona’s largest county. Polk County Sheriff Bill McCarthy has beaten back the second challenge from Republican Charleston.

Iowa Democrats are on track to lose at least five state Senate seats, maybe as many as seven. Rich Taylor trails the early returns in Senate district 42, which doesn’t surprise me much, but I’m stunned to see Senator Tom Courtney behind in a nearby district that includes Burlington. Neither party spent a lot of money there.

Iowa hasn’t been called for Trump yet, for some reason. It looks like his lead will hold up in Wisconsin.

It looks like all three Iowa Supreme Court justices will be retained. In contrast to 2010 and 2012, social conservatives didn’t mount an organized campaign against them.

All of the Polk County state legislative incumbents won re-election, including House Republicans Chris Hagenow, Peter Cownie, Kevin Koester, Zach Nunn, Jake Highfill, John Landon and House Democrat John Forbes.

As expected, Nate Boulton won the open Iowa Senate district 16 on the east side of Des Moines.

Representative Dave Loebsack is on track to win a sixth term in Iowa’s second Congressional district.

Wisconsin could hand Trump the presidency, possibly thanks to suppressing African-American votes.

11:00 UPDATE: Trump improved on Mitt Romney’s performance in many counties across the country. The white vote shifted significantly in his direction. Clinton doesn’t appear to be getting as many white women’s votes as polls had anticipated.

Speaking of which, the Huffington Post’s senior polling editor Natalie Jackson pointed out that Trump never led Clinton in a single poll of Wisconsin or Michigan, and he only led two polls of Pennsylvania (both taken many months ago).

Representative Rod Blum won a second term in the first Congressional district. A year ago I thought he was a goner. He was widely considered among the most vulnerable House Republicans in the country.

Finally, the tv networks are calling Iowa for Trump. He has pulled ahead in Pennsylvania.

Almost competitive U.S. Senate race is going to the Republicans, except for Illinois and Nevada. Looks like 22 million people could lose their health insurance soon under President Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress.

Unofficial results show big wins for Republicans in most of the competitive Iowa Senate races. Dan Dawson defeated Majority Leader Mike Gronstal in Senate district 8 by nearly 2,000 votes, a 54 percent to 46 percent margin.

Senator Mary Jo Wilhelm is losing to Waylon Brown in Senate district 26 by more than 20 points (not all the precincts are in).

Senator Brian Schoenjahn is also losing by double digits to Craig Johnson in Senate district 32.

Senator Steve Sodders trails Jeff Edler by double digits in Senate district 36.

Senator Rich Taylor is only a little behind Danny Graber in Senate district 42, the race I thought might be a sleeper.

I didn’t realize that the sleeper would be Senate district 44, where Senator Tom Courtney lost to Thomas Greene by more than a thousand votes.

Senator Chris Brase lost to Mark Lofgren in Senate district 46.

The only targeted senate Democrats who survived represent districts that are less working-class, with more voters having a college degree: Senator Liz Mathis in district 34 and Senator Jeff Danielson in district 30.

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desmoinesdem

  • Ugh

    It looks like a freaking wave election – Gronstal losing by 8%? WTH?

    • wave indeed

      The D’s drop at least two more seats in the House, and six to seven in the Senate (Gronstal, Courtney, Wilhelm, Schoenjahn, Brase; some votes left in the Sodders race and Rich Taylor has a slight lead. Only 18,000 counted in Sodders, so just depends where the votes are I suppose

  • Sodders

    and Sodders has lost as well

  • New Hampshire stayed blue . . .

    . . . and Maggie Hassan beat Kelly Ayotte. And in North Carolina, even though Trump won, their awful Republican Gov. Pat McCrory lost. All that plus Arpaio losing in Arizona are the three positive points amidst the darkness of last night.

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