Why did Iowa barely budge?

[Tekken_Guy]

Trump won Iowa by almost the same margin as he did in 2016. Why did the state barely move?

[Devils30]

Rural and heavily WWC, Des Moines area is a fraction of Atlanta, Philly, Detroit, Dallas, Minneapolis and other places where Dems surged.

[Sol]

$$$$$ for ag.

[Frenchrepublican]

Because the swings cancelled each other, DesMoines and the west swung left but the rest of the state swung right.

[Frenchrepublican]

Rural and heavily WWC, Des Moines area is a fraction of Atlanta, Philly, Detroit, Dallas, Minneapolis and other places where Dems surged.

Besides if the DesMoines area swung left, pro dem trends were much less pronounced than in Atlanta or Minneapolis

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

Rural and heavily WWC, Des Moines area is a fraction of Atlanta, Philly, Detroit, Dallas, Minneapolis and other places where Dems surged.

Biden did worse than Clinton in the cities of Phili and Detroit.

[Hope For A New Era]

Trumpist turnout. Iowa and Wisconsin seem to be the states where the Trump-on-the-ballot effect is most powerful.

I've mentioned this in a few other threads too - Joe Biden and Rob Sand got similar raw vote totals in most eastern counties. Trump just brings out more voters than literally anyone else, ever, and if there's any state where higher turnout helps Republicans, it's Iowa.

[Bootes Void]

Rural and heavily WWC, Des Moines area is a fraction of Atlanta, Philly, Detroit, Dallas, Minneapolis and other places where Dems surged.

Biden did worse than Clinton in the cities of Phili and Detroit.

But he probably netted more votes in absolute terms from there

[DabbingSanta]

I'm not convinced it is the Trump effect.  I think Ohio and Iowa are genuinely done for the Democrats moving forward.  We have seen the same thing play out in Senate and governor races.  Years of voting for the same party and nothing has improved for these people.  If anything, some of these free trade agreements have really screwed these people over.  Thousands of jobs continue to be outsourced to developing countries and they are not coming back.  The coal mines, steel mills, auto factories are done across the Rust Belt, and the agricultural industry (big in Iowa) continues to decline.  Most of the farms you see today are rented out to big corporations like Monsanto.  

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The trend of WI, IA, OH, PA and MI are all Democratic, but OH is now a battleground state due to 3 C's and have 12% AA. It looks like TX and IA don't have competetive Senate races in 2022/2024/ and OH, WI, MI and PA do. D's should triage IA and TX and go for the gusto in 2022/2024 OH, WI, MI, PA and FL

IA doesn't have enough minorities in the state, to contest anymore, Kim Reynolds and Joni Ernst are gonna serve as long as they want

Ohio isn't voting 9 pts to the right anymore.  It will come back

[Devils30]

The trend of WI, IA, OH, PA and MI are all Democratic, but OH is now a battleground state due to 3 C's and have 12% AA. It looks like TX and IA don't have competetive Senate races in 2022/2024/ and OH, WI, MI and PA do. D's should triage IA and TX and go for the gusto in 2022/2024 OH, WI, MI, PA and FL

IA doesn't have enough minorities in the state, to contest anymore, Kim Reynolds and Joni Ernst are gonna serve as long as they want

Ohio isn't voting 9 pts to the right anymore.  It will come back

It won't, unless Dems are poised to start getting 65% in Hamilton, 70%+ in Franklin and 55% in Delaware.

[SnowLabrador]

A combination of demographic trends and Trump being a very good fit for the state.

[Progressive Pessimist]

In fairness, it was a way bigger shift than in Ohio, comparatively.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

$$$$$ for ag.

This. The Trump admin shovelled a ton of money to farmers who were exposed by the trade war with China.

[TML]

The Democratic candidates for President and Senate weren’t all that inspiring to working-class voters who had been instrumental to Democratic victories for almost three decades (remember that Biden was essentially the same type of establishment Democratic candidate as Hillary was in 2016). I don’t know if any candidates could have guaranteed the state to flip back, but I do think that a Sanders-style candidate would have at least made the margin not further right than R+5 or so.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

IA and TX aren't battlegrounds we have no serious contested seats in 2022/2024 and Kim Reynolds transcended her popularity to Joni Ernst and Grassley gas Pat Grassley running the state

[wbrocks67]

Once I saw that Joni Ernst still won by 6% after the horrific campaign she ran, I knew it was over for Biden there.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Because the swings cancelled each other, Des Moines and the west swung left but the rest of the state swung right.

Des Moines, western IA, and every county larger than Dubuque. I will give it to you that most of the counties swung R, and the DSM metro isn't as proportionally big as Atlanta or Minneapolis, but it's worth noting that most of the counties that people actually live in swung D.

[Xing]

Because it's a Republican state now.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

We gotta see who runs against Kin Reynolds

[Motorcity]

In 2012, Obama won 823k votes and Romney won 731k votes

In 2016, Trump won 801k votes and Hillary won 654k. This means there were about 70k Obama-Trump voters and 100k Obama voters stayed home.

In 2020, Trump got 898k votes and Biden got 759k votes.

Basically, Biden was able to get those 100k Obama voters that stayed home in 2016. But the Obama-Trump voters stayed home. Not only that, Trump got another 97k voters who never voted before to come out.

Basically, Iowa is lost. It was unique for the plains states that it had max turnout and Democrats had strong support. But now thousands of former swing voters now vote like their fellow farmers in South Dakota and Nebraska.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Iowa was hit harder than anywhere else by the 80s farm crisis. It turned voters into loyal Democrats for a long while and, with the passage of time, Iowan voters either care about it less or die off. It is likely to become titanium R soon and stay there in the medium term.

That said, Iowa's R trend wasn't nearly as strong as half of Atlas was suggesting (and weaker than I expected - I thought IA would be closer, to be clear, but in the context of a national Biden landslide). Relative to the tipping point's trend as opposed to the popular vote (this former measure is closer to the centre of political gravity as it decides presidential elections), it became a better state for Democrats than it was after 2016.

Edit: my mistake. I must have confused IA with another state that trended R relative to the PV but not relative to the tipping point.

[Gracile]

Iowa was hit harder than anywhere else by the 80s farm crisis. It turned voters into loyal Democrats for a long while and, with the passage of time, Iowan voters either care about it less or die off. It is likely to become titanium R soon and stay there in the medium term.

That said, Iowa's R trend wasn't nearly as strong as half of Atlas was suggesting (and weaker than I expected - I thought IA would be closer, to be clear, but in the context of a national Biden landslide). Relative to the tipping point's trend as opposed to the popular vote (this former measure is closer to the centre of political gravity as it decides presidential elections), it became a better state for Democrats than it was after 2016.

Iowa became more Republican relative to the tipping point state in 2020 as well (8.8% more Republican than Wisconsin, compared to 8.6% in 2016). Overall, not a strong trend but less pronounced than the nation/tipping point state.