Four Iowa Republican candidates received large donations in 2018 from Russell Taub, who agreed last week to plead guilty to federal crimes related to his political activity.
The stories linked below weren’t the most popular pieces to appear on this site during 2018. Some of them weren’t as newsworthy as the work I’m proudest of from last year. But of the 355 posts I wrote for this website in 2018, these ones fueled the fondest memories.
Twelfth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2018 state and federal elections.
One of the hottest debates in Democratic activist circles relates to strategy for winning statewide and national elections. Does the party need to fix a base turnout problem by nominating contenders who will inspire passionate support among progressives? Or is the more urgent task appealing to voters who used to back Democrats, but lately have favored Republican candidates?
This post doesn’t claim to settle that argument, but searches for clues in the results and turnout rates from key Iowa counties where Fred Hubbell underperformed in his bid to unseat Governor Kim Reynolds.
Eleventh in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2018 state and federal elections.
David Wasserman, U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report, planted the seed for this post when he observed last month,
If you’d told me before the election that Rs would win an average of 83% of Trump’s ’16 votes in contested House races, I would’ve told you they were probably on track to keep their majority.
But Dems are averaging 93% of Clinton’s totals & are on track for a 40-seat rout.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 21, 2018
Iowans Abby Finkenauer (IA-01) and Cindy Axne (IA-03) delivered two of those newly-Democratic House seats. I wondered: how did they and their opponents perform compared to their party’s last presidential nominee?
“It’s not helpful, I don’t agree,” Governor Kim Reynolds says she has told Representative Steve King after some of his racist statements made national news.
Her two-faced approach to Iowa’s most famous bigot isn’t fooling anyone.
Polls just closed in Iowa, and I will update this thread frequently throughout the night as results come in. Separate posts on some of the statewide and Congressional races will be forthcoming once the outcome is clear. The Secretary of State’s website is compiling vote totals here. Anecdotal evidence suggests turnout far exceeded 2014 levels on election day.
Early voting already set a record for an Iowa midterm election. This post includes tables showing absentee ballots requested and returned in all four Congressional districts from October 9 through November 6. The numbers aren’t quite final; absentee ballots can be hand-delivered to county auditors today, and ballots arriving by mail later this week can be counted with a postmark dated November 5 or earlier.
What we know: at least 538,043 Iowans voted before election day this year. The total early vote in 2014 was 465,166. Iowa Democrats cast 186,269 early ballots in 2014. As of this morning, 230,294 Democrats had already voted. Republicans cast 178,653 early ballots in 2014 and were at 189,961 this morning. Turnout among no-party Iowa voters typically drops sharply in non-presidential years. Four years ago, 99,491 independents cast ballots; the comparable number today is 114,878.
Earlier today, I reviewed the nine Iowa Senate races most likely to be competitive and 20 Iowa House races that will likely decide control of the lower chamber.
