After decades spent at the center of both parties’ strategies for winning the Electoral College, Iowa is suddenly an afterthought to Democrats, who talk openly about not contesting the state at all
DES MOINES—The exhausted voters of Iowa, who for decades have been trapped in a continual churn of presidential politics, are about to get a long-awaited reprieve.Iowa’s place at the molten core of the political universe has, for much of the past half-century, owed to the marriage of its first-in-the-nation nominating contest with the state’s reputation as a quintessential general-election battleground.
Few states received more time and attention from Barack Obama during his White House campaigns than Iowa. Part of that was due to its pride of place in his political ascent; Iowa, after all, was the state that vaulted him from longshot to Clinton slayer. But there was also as widespread view back then that Iowa was up for grabs in November. Now, less than five years removed from his presidency, Democrats talk openly about not contesting the state at all.
Moreover, there’s recent history to consider: Democrats flipped two Republican-held congressional seats in the 2018 midterms, giving the party control of three of the state’s four districts, and also won a number of bellwether legislative races in the suburban areas around Des Moines. These victories, on top of ousting the Republican state auditor, gave some Democrats confidence of being able to compete statewide with Trump’s apparatus in 2020.
Officials from different parties who studied these 2018 results reached a similar conclusion: That Republicans can afford to continue bleeding support in 11 of the state’s 99 counties, as Reynolds did, so long as they continue to expand their dominance of the remaining 88 counties.
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