Iowa bellwether counties score mixed record on Election Day

CEDAR RAPIDS — Iowa's bellwether counties rang up a so-so record of predicting winners on Election Day.

Seven Iowa counties identified by various news services and political analysts as bellwethers were, for the most part, off the mark in reflecting the statewide results in the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, according to unofficial results from the Iowa Secretary of State. In a couple of cases, voters in the so-called bellwethers didn't identify the winner.

Voter behavior seemed to bear out the pre-election warning of Joe Lenski, co-founder and executive vice president of Edison Research, which conducted exit polling at 40 Iowa precincts.

'Bellwethers are good predictors until they are not,' he said.

On Tuesday, they weren't.

Only five of the seven counties picked state Sen. Joni Ernst, a Red Oak Republican, as the winner of Iowa's U.S. Senate race.

She defeated U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley of Waterloo by a 52.2 percent to 43.7 percent margin, according to the SOS. Allamakee (52.8 percent) and Jasper (52 percent) came closest to mirroring the statewide number for Ernst.

Her share of the vote in the others counties ranged from 44.6 percent in Howard County to 54.9 percent in Cedar County. Voters in Howard and Worth counties gave Braley the win.

In the gubernatorial race, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad won 98 of 99 counties with 59 percent of the 1,120,801 votes cast. State Sen. Jack Hatch of Des Moines won 37.2 percent of the vote.

In the seven bellwether counties, Branstad's share of the vote ranged from 55 percent in Jasper to 64.6 percent in Worth.