Nearly all Iowa counties pushed Grassley, Reynolds to victory

DES MOINES — Iowa Republicans at the top of the ballot won in all but a handful of counties on Election Day, while support for Democrats was concentrated mostly in urban areas.

Democrat Mike Franken won a majority of votes in just five counties in his unsuccessful bid to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Sen Chuck Grassley: Linn, Johnson, Story, Polk and Black Hawk. Nonetheless, Franken held Grassley to his closest margin since his first election and performed better than Grassley’s last opponent, Patty Judge, who won only Johnson County in 2016.

Grassley won 56 percent of the vote as of Wednesday with nearly all precincts reporting, while Franken won 44 percent.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate ordered a recount of votes in Des Moines and Warren Counties because of technical problems, but early returns showed Grassley ahead in both counties.

Franken ran ahead by close to 43 percentage points in Johnson County, 14 points in Story County and 13 points in Polk County. Larger counties where Grassley bested Franken included Scott, where he won by 4 percentage points, Dallas, where he won by 6 points and Woodbury, where he won by 27 points.

Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds pulled in 58 percent of the vote, winning one more county than Grassley. She picked up about 51 percent of support in Black Hawk County, flipping it and six other counties she lost in 2018. Democrat Deidre DeJear, who won nearly 40 percent of the statewide vote, won Johnson, Story, Polk and Linn counties.

DeJear’s showing lagged the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Fred Hubbell, who won 48 percent of the vote that year against Reynolds. Hubbell won a majority of votes in Lee, Des Moines, Jefferson, Dubuque, Black Hawk, Clinton and Scott, in addition to the same four DeJear won this year.

DeJear also underperformed Franken in the counties she won: She had a margin of 40 percentage points in Johnson, 10 points in Story, 8 points in Polk and 5 points in Linn.

Franken’s tally compared with DeJear could be chalked up to concerns among Iowans about granting Grassley an eighth term and Franken’s quality as a candidate, political science professors said. In an October Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, Grassley’s approval rating hit an all-time low, with only 44 percent of Iowans saying they approve of the job he’s doing. By contrast, 53 percent of Iowans approved of Reynolds’ job as governor.

“I wonder if there’s that lingering feeling among Republicans or independents who would have supported Grassley consistently over the years, that maybe his time is up,” Grinnell College political science Professor Barbara Trish said.

Libertarian Rick Stewart got 2.4 percent of the reported votes for governor, meaning the Libertarian Party is on track to regain its major party status in Iowa. By state law, if a candidate for a “non-party political organization” gets more than 2 percent of the vote in a general election, that organization becomes a legally recognized political party. The Libertarians recently gained party status in 2016 but lost it two years later in 2018.

Urban-rural split

The results suggest a continuation of the urban-rural divide playing out across the nation, as well as the move of Iowa counties near the Mississippi River toward the Republican Party, experts said.

“Democrats are all packed into a couple of counties, by and large,” University of Iowa political science Professor Tim Hagle said. “At least in terms of where they’ve got the voter strength. Obviously, there are Democrats everywhere as well as no-party voters and Republicans.”

Some of the larger counties in the eastern part of the state, like Scott and Dubuque, also look to be gaining Republican support.

Paul Hemmer, a spokesperson for the Dubuque County Republicans, credited GOP wins this year to a group of dedicated local candidates. He also said local voters support Reynolds’ and Grassley’s stance on COVID-19 and economic policies.

“They worked together, they knocked on doors, thousands of doors,” he said of the county’s local candidates. “Attended social events throughout the community, they appeared in numerous parades.”

Bret Nilles, chair of the Linn County Democrats, said to win in the future, Democrats need to figure out how to reach rural voters.

“We’ve got to find a way to get our message out, and find a way to communicate it,” he said. “So people in the rural counties are hearing that, just to be able to mitigate some of the people that are voting consistently Republican.”

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