Still Not Red
After the results of the November 2022 general election, you could be forgiven for assuming that Iowa is now a red state. After all, Iowa was one of the few places that got the “red wave” memo…right up there with Florida and to a lesser extent Tennessee.
But while Republicans did win a lot more races than Democrats in that election…this is still not a “red state”—and all you have to do is look at voter registration numbers to make the point.
After the November election, there were roughly 2.2 million registered voters in Iowa…1.9 million of those are termed “active” voters, meaning people who have voted recently.
Of that 1.9 million active voters, roughly a third are Republicans, a third are Democrats, and a third are “no party” voters. That means some 590,000 voters do not declare a party affiliation…and therefore, do not have loyalty to vote R or D consistently.
At the moment, a large number of those no party voters have voted Republican…that explains why Republicans were re-elected by rather large margins in both of eastern Iowa’s congressional districts two months ago…despite the fact that Democrats outnumbered Republicans in each district.
But it’s just as likely that the pendulum could swing the other way by 2024…it’s happened before in Iowa, and not all that long ago. There was talk in the not too distant past that Iowa was close to being a blue state…a far distance from where we are, in a short time.
There are about 90 thousand more Republicans registered than Democrats statewide…but that full margin is in the fourth district in Western Iowa. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the other three districts, by 8 to 14 thousand voters each. That’s important in state legislative races, county races, and of course, congressional races.
Again, it’s the no party voters making the difference. Iowa may trend red at the moment…but no one, on either side, should take that for granted.
