IA: Selzer & Co/Des Moines Register: Trump +10 vs Biden

[RINO Tom]

(I lived in Iowa City before moving to Chicago this past August.)

What a lot of people do not realize is that Iowa Democrats were VERY reliant on rural voters.  Yes, they ran up insane margins in Johnson County and predictably won urban areas like Des Moines, the Quad Cities, Waterloo, etc.  However, the traditional GOP bases in the state have been Western Iowa rural voters (specifically NW Iowa, which has a long and rabid Republican history) and the numerous suburban voters around Des Moines.

In 2016, Trump won all of suburban Des Moines's counties and got above 40% in Polk (Des Moines), Linn (Cedar Rapids) and Scott (Quad Cities), almost winning the latter.  All in all, those counties gave Trump over 180,000 votes, and overall Trump got over 31% of his vote total from counties he lost.  I'm not sure how that stacks up to other states, but my point is that Democrats can't win a state if they are giving that many votes to the Republican in the counties that are forming their "base."  When Iowa Democrats were winning elections, they were sweeping tons of rural counties in Eastern Iowa, and they certainly were easily winning blue collar, small cities like Muscatine and Dubuque.

I was never one to jump on the "Iowa isn't a swing state" bandwagon, but Democrats certainly need to recover at the very least their small city, working class support.  The Republican suburban voters in Des Moines are less flexible than those of a Chicago or Philadelphia.  This is for several reasons, many of which will fit into Atlas Democrats' misplaced sense of superiority about themselves, but ones not talked about enough are that 1) these suburbanites are very White, and White suburbanites regardless of education are likely still a GOP-leaning demographic nationwide and 2) these suburbs have the infrastructure, values, culture and economic climate of NEW suburbs (aka, what places like DuPage County looked like decades ago), and new suburbs have always been and likely always will be very Republican, regardless of demographic factors.

[RINO Tom]

^Which "suburban" counties or areas are we talking about here? The three most Republican small-town/rural counties in NW Iowa (and the entire state) gave Trump a larger raw vote margin than all the counties bordering Polk County combined, even if we exclude Story County (which is easily the most populous and "suburban" of the nine, was more Democratic than Polk, and one of only four counties to trend Democratic in 2016). The second of the four counties to trend Democratic was Dallas County, the most populous Des Moines suburban county after Story, and this one even swung Democratic.

No offense (maybe I’m blind), but I don’t see how it’s inflexible Republican "suburban" voters in the Des Moines area which are contributing to Iowa's rightward shift in any noticeable way.

For someone who has accused me of letting "what I want to happen" obscure my *analysis* in the past, you sure seem to have misinterpreted what I said.  

As to your first question, I am indeed talking about the DSM suburbs.  I'm not sure what is controversial about my claim that they are less flexible than suburbs like Chicago and Philadelphia, as the ones that moved toward Clinton like most suburban areas didn't do so by a whole lot, and some (like Warren) even moved toward Trump.  That would imply an inflexibility that is greater than suburbs that moved further left than that ... no?

Regarding your comment about the NW Iowa counties, I genuinely don't know what you are getting at.  I specifically mentioned those counties as the traditional GOP base in the state, and Romney got the same margins as Trump in that area ... ignoring that I did not deny rural voters and small city voters were the main reason for the GOP shift (in fact ... I said they were...?), these NW IA voters are certainly not the reason; they were already in the fold.  What percent of Trump's margin they provided is frankly irrelevant, as they are a constant in both elections and provide no insight into Democratic losses...?

No offense on my end this time, but to categorize Story County as the "most suburban" is just intentionally false or ignorant of the county ... Iowa State University is there, it is fundamentally a college town community and its Democratic voting is not at all tied to any type of trends in our post-2012 environment (the relevant period to identify when Democrats started fading in the state).

Regarding your summation sentence at the end, I did not - anywhere in my post - say it was the inflexible suburban voters of metro Des Moines that are driving a rightward shift in Iowa ... that would literally make no sense, as I am claiming they were Republican before and still pretty Republican now ... naturally, they couldn't drive a shift.  So, that confuses me that you think I said that.  I specifically and clearly stated that Democrats lost the state by losing rural and (much more importantly) small-city voters in Eastern Iowa that they used to win, and they haven't made up for it NEARLY enough by winning everyone's stereotype of the type of new voter they are attracting now a days (suburban voters) in Iowa.

[RINO Tom]

MT, maybe I will go back through all of this and provide detailed responses when I finish all my schoolwork for the week, but this really isn't as complicated as this endless quoting would imply, and I don't honestly see what you are saying that is different from what I am saying.  Simplified:

Democrats were more reliant on rural and small town/city voters in Iowa than they were in the vast majority of states that they were still being successful in during the Obama era.  In some states, they have been able to offset their rural losses with gains in suburban areas (like Georgia or Pennsylvania).  In Iowa, their gains among suburbanites have not been enough to make up for this for two reasons - firstly, they didn't flip any suburban counties that Republicans were winning in 2012, and second, there aren't enough of these types of voters for them to flip in the first place.  Hence, there is no path for Democrats back in Iowa if they can't recover in working class cities or towns (like Muscatine and Dubuque) and/or rural areas.  They will always usually win Story (college town has traditionally provided this win), Johnson (same), Polk (Des Moines votes a bit more like most urban cities), Black Hawk (large minority population) and Scott (fairly Democratic working class voters still).  They can't run up margins in a few counties and win the state, they have to win back voters they lost rather than flip new ones, as smaller, newer and more fundamentally conservative suburbs like Des Moines' (including every county in the DSM MSA) are indeed less willing to give the Democrats a try in the Trump era, at least in numbers needed to flip the counties.  On top of that, they aren't numerous enough to flip the counties.  I don't think you'd disagree with any of that, so honestly it seems like your entire reason for critiquing my original post was it irked you that I typed "Republican suburban voters" or some equivalent in a post in 2020.