Republicans should be in an excellent position to win both the open seat for governor of Iowa and the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. Donald Trump carried the state easily in each of the last three presidential elections. In 2024, he won Iowa by 13.2 percentage points, the biggest margin of victory in a presidential election in Iowa since 1972.
The last time Iowa elected a Democrat governor was 20 years ago. A Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate election in the state since 2008. No Iowa Democrat has been elected to the U.S. House since 2020. Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Iowa Legislature 10 years ago, and still have it. Four years ago, Republicans were elected to every statewide office, except Auditor. Republicans should be in an excellent position to win both the open seat for governor of Iowa and the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.
But according to Jessica Taylor, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report (CPR) editor for Governors and U.S. Senate, “it’s increasingly hard to ignore both public and private polling.” This week, CPR, one of the country’s leading election analysis sites, changed its ranking of the Iowa governor’s race from Toss Up to Lean Democratic, and moved the Senate race from Lean Republican to Toss Up.
At the beginning of the year, CPR rated the governor’s race as Lean Republican and the Senate race as Likely Republican. Since then, both races have trended steadily in the Democrats’ direction, according to CPR’s analysis. In April, it moved the governor’s race to the Toss Up category. In June, the Senate race went from Likely Republican to Lean Republican.
“State auditor Rob Sand has been running one of the strongest campaigns in the country this cycle, and he has opened up a consistent lead outside of the margin of error in both public and private polling,” Taylor wrote in the CPR analysis published on Thursday.
As for state Sen. Josh Turek and his run for Senate against four-term U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, “Republicans acknowledge it’s tighter than they’d like, but their internal surveys still have Hinson leading within the margin of error. Republicans will privately admit that Turek — a former Gold Medal basketball paralympian who’s in a wheelchair due to spina bifida — is hard to demonize.”
Turek may be hard to demonize, but Republicans are willing to spend a lot of money trying. The Senate Leadership Fund, the Republican Party’s top PAC supporting its Senate candidates, “has already committed $33 million in the relatively inexpensive state.” And Hinson herself “is a prodigious fundraiser,” Taylor notes.
“Turek needs to raise more money if this is going to remain a top-tier opportunity for Democrats, but the early spending Republicans are already deploying to define Turek shows they’re concerned about their prospects in this now-battleground state,” Taylor wrote.
Rob Sand is in a stronger position in the governor’s race. CPR doesn’t expect his “race against Republican Zach Lahn to be a blowout, as no race in the Hawkeye State is for Democrats … but right now Sand has a strong enough advantage to move it into Lean Democrat.”
There are still 74 days until the Nov. 3 election, and things may change, Taylor cautioned.
“Summer polling can show sugar highs for the party out of power that evaporate once spending begins in earnest and undecided voters return to their partisan camps,” she wrote. “Republicans have an unmistakable financial advantage that could revitalize their sagging candidates, but it may not be able to make up for the sizable voter enthusiasm gap that Democrats have on their side.”
CPR didn’t just move Iowa’s races for governor and Senate in the Democrats’ direction on Thursday — it also moved the two same races in Texas. The governor’s race went from Solidly Republican to Likely Republican, and the Senate race went from Lean Republican to Toss Up.
Texas will be a much harder lift for Democrats. The last time it elected a Democrat governor was in 1990. It last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1988.
