Talk Elections

Moderate Margins. Every republican county in state, besides the obvious outlier of Sioux, was won by less than 5,000 votes. 26 of democrats 38 counties was won under 2,000 votes. 56 out of 99 total counties were won under 1,000 votes. Almost all the % margins are under 60% besides the republican outliers of the Northwestern Corner and the democrat outlier of Johnson County (Iowa City). When studying counties and votes, Iowa is probably the most boring state.

I think this is because the state is incredibly white. States with more diversity have more extreme margins in areas. I think there is a limit to the white vote where Vermont is the ceiling and Mississippi is the floor. Souix County to Johnson County. This is why very white cities like Dubuque never go into the 70's for Dems. You will almost never see a county go >70% D when 90+% White. This same kind of narritive can be explained through Western Wisconsin and Southern Minnesota, there don't appear to be high margins simply because the state is very white in the Midwest where whites happen to not be very republican. This, in my view, seems to be why counties in the Midwest are very moderate with a few outliers.

What do you guys think?

Iowa doesn't tend to change much throughout the state. It's very rural though and there aren't any major cities. It's interesting how in the Midwest, rural areas aren't safely Republican while just on the other side of the great plains, we see a 70-30 difference.

Yep, specifically in the upper Midwest (Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan) there are many swing counties. Iowa in particular seems to have a box around it that says "don't go over 60%" because you go to northern Missouri or Nebraska and you immediately see margins over 60%. Many people here in this region get many farm subsidizes from the government so that's a theory, but if that's the case, why doesn't rural Kansas vote 50/50? It's still something I'm trying to figure out and it's kind of frustrating. Here in Wisconsin the rural vote barely leans R, urban vote is ridiculously D (Dane and Milwaukee), and suburbs are Solid R (Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee, and St. Croix) so if only rural vote was solid R this would be a swing state.

Possibly undecided independents (or democrat-leaning independents) who got turned off when the liberal media and the Obama team exposed some of Romney's "hateful" words, (I remember the Obama team put together a montage of all the bad things Romney said toward the end (when the most people were paying attention) when Romney kind of took a break toward the end. Obama had a surge towards the end nationally as well with Sandy, so sadly that could've been it too.

Yes the media certainly handed Obama the election. I remember when Romney was referring to poor health insurance providers and said "When it comes to poor health insurance providers, I don't know about you, but I like being able to fire people." We all know how this was butchered up for the voters. Another thing was when Bin Laden's corpse was on every TV station in Ohio. I can only imagine if Bush did that in 2004. In fact Democrats peed their pants when Saddam Hussein was shown after being captured.

Or MAYBEEEE....Iowa is just not as conservative as you think it is. It has only voted Republican one time since 1988, when Bush barely won it in '04. The state supreme court legalized gay marriage there  before a lot of other blue states and the judge who pushed it through was retained by the voters.

Also, Iowa isn't as rural as you think, either. People are increasingly moving to the larger cities there like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, and the state is becoming more diverse.

This.  Isn't Iowa largely a collection of small-ish cities situated on the river? 

Totally, Eastern Iowa is a much more like Minnesota and Wisconsin.

It's not that conservative internally or externally. It used to be a light red state at the presidential level until the 70's/80's. The first sign we see of it being a battleground state is in 1976. Reagan won there both times but just about every state voted for Reagan. Also, it was pretty close in 1984. Due to the farm crisis they voted for Dukakis, but this wouldn't have likely happened 20 years prior. Since then Iowa has leaned Democrat. Throughout the 70's and 80's we saw the Hawkeye state move from center right to center left. Internally, it was one of the first states to legalize gay marriage. For the last quarter century there hasn't been much movement and I don't see need for debate about if the state is trending. To put it simply, it's purplish blue.

I was also confused about why Iowa is so swingy, compared to the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas. Apparently there is still some union influence there, much as in the rest of the midwest.