Political Science Professors

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A month can be an eternity in politics. This summer is proof. We'll talk with two Political Scientists about the developments and the impacts up and down the ballot on this edition of Iowa Press.

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, August 23rd edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

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Henderson: To our loyal viewers, welcome back. The last time we convened around this table was the day after the Republican National Convention concluded. There have been a few things that have happened in the political world since then and our guests today will talk about that and the shape of races in Iowa. Our guests are people that have been on this set before. Chris Larimer is a University of Northern Iowa Political Science Professor. He has written a book about Iowa Governors. He has also done research about voter mobilization. And Donna Hoffman, a University of Northern Iowa Political Science Professor, has written about Iowa as a swing state and she has also talked about how politicians reach millennial voters. So, welcome to both of you.

Hoffman: Thank you.

Larimer: Thank you.

Henderson: Also joining our conversation are Stephen Gruber-Miller of the Des Moines Register and Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

Murphy: So, I'm curious to get both of your impressions on this. Donna Hoffman we'll start with you. We're coming off the heels of the national conventions, the democrats more recently wrapped up this week, republicans a few weeks prior. Based on what you saw in the various speeches and from the candidates in particular, do you feel that which convention's messaging may resonate better with Iowa voters? Donna Hoffman, we'll start with you.

Hoffman: Well, we have some recency bias because the Democratic Convention just wrapped up. But Iowa voters definitely have a clear choice I would say. The conventions were very different. The themes were very different. And so sometimes I think some voters want to think that oh, politicians they're all alike, there's not a clear difference. But there is a clear difference if one is paying attention. And so, I think the Republican Convention very clearly harkened back to Trump's previous term. But the theme of that convention also -- every day has a theme typically -- the theme of that convention it was always a riff on make America something again. The first day was make America wealthy again. Then it was safe. And then the final day was make America great once again, harkening back to that theme that Trump had. The democrats, however, their theme was for the people and it was very forward looking. And their themes were highlighting the policy strengths that they perceive that they have, but also making contrasts with the republicans. So, one of the differences that you really noticed, or that I really noticed anyway, was that they highlighted on every night in primetime either a former republican or still someone who professes to be a republican but was supporting the Democratic Party or the democratic ticket. And they talked about why that was. It is often the case when parties have conventions that they will highlight somebody of the opposition party. But I don't think the republicans did that. I do think they had the former democratic mayor of Dallas who is now a republican. So that was a big focus I think in particular for democrats to be welcoming. And even Adam Kinzinger talked last night and one of the things he talked about was how he didn't necessarily say he found a home in the Democratic Party, because I think he still calls himself a republican, but it's welcoming, they're patriotic like we are. And so that is one of the key themes that democrats wanted to highlight. And then that for the people notion. Kamala Harris worked that into her speech as well. And so, the republicans wanted to harken back to an earlier time, the democrats wanted to look forward and that's really kind of a clear difference.

Murphy: And I want to move onto Chris, but real quick you mentioned the stark contrast that you feel voters have right now. Is it safe to say that the change at the top of the ticket for the Democratic Party from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris made that possible? Would that have been tougher to do for democrats if Joe Biden was still the nominee?

Hoffman: I think the age thing does make a difference. Those kinds of things matter a lot in terms of how we perceive things. This convention, I was actually really quite impressed that democrats pulled it off, that the Harris people pulled the Democratic Convention off with what appears to be literally no hitches that at least we could see. And that's very difficult to do under normal circumstances. But I do think that age difference made a difference. And we saw it in kind of I want to use the word vibes. We saw it in the vibes when Biden dropped out and we saw Kamala Harris energize supporters, energize volunteers, energize people giving money and that translated over to that convention. So, I do think it definitely made a difference. The policies really haven't changed, right, but it made a difference in the feeling and what that convention center, at least how it translated across the television, what it felt like because it felt very energized. The republicans did not as much. And you can contrast the roll call I think and that would really exemplify it.

Murphy: Chris Larimer, did you see anything from the conventions that might have resonated with Iowa voters?

Larimer: Well, I think both parties probably accomplished what they wanted to in terms of activating their core group of supporters. I don't know that I have, I haven't seen any data on if there are particular issues that Iowans care about that's different than sort of the top issues that adults nationally care about. I think republicans, as Donna was talking about, they were talking about the issues that they see as winning issues, they were talking about immigration, crime control policies whereas democrats were talking about reproductive freedom and climate change, among other issues. And so, I think both parties probably accomplished what they needed to in terms of activating voters. It's just now will that activation or the enthusiasm that Donna talked about, is that going to sustain itself into November?

Gruber-Miller: Let's talk about that a little bit and I'm kind of curious, the biggest news event since this show has been on air is the replacing of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris on the democratic ticket. What impact could that have on Iowa's competitive congressional districts in the first and third districts? Chris?

Larimer: Well, I think yeah, I think it's a voter enthusiasm issue. For candidates, democratic candidates running at the Statehouse level in Iowa, before Joe Biden dropped out, I guess you would have to talk to those candidates, but were they essentially having to try to create two narratives in the minds of voters when they would knock on the doors because they would try to talk about themselves and if they were worried about Joe Biden's approval rating in Iowa do they have to talk, essentially create two different narratives? Now with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket if there's more enthusiasm there, can that be more of a shared narrative and that is something that is going to mobilize voters going into November in a way that is more effective than if Kamala Harris wasn't at the top of the ticket.

Gruber-Miller: And Donna, we've seen House Democratic Leader Jennifer Konfrst say there's polling that shows Harris is doing better, losing to Trump still but by less than Biden was and some of these competitive Statehouse districts around the state too. Is there an impact on Statehouse races?

Hoffman: Sure, and I think that translates. One of the things we know is that there are very few ticket splitters these days. Now, how we measure that is if you vote for the President's party and then you also vote for the House race. But that has got to translate down ballot, at least to some degree as well, even though we don't have data on that. And so very, very few people are picking and choosing between the parties. And so, you can be pretty confident that if enthusiasm is up with democrats in the state that that will translate down ballot typically. The question is how much does it translate? And does it make a difference in any of the races? But one of the challenges that democrats in particular have in Iowa right now, but this goes for republicans too, is that many of the Statehouse races, for example, and a handful of the Senate ones, are unopposed. And that has kind of been a big change. If you look back in 2020, for example, I think there were 9 unopposed races in the Statehouse and now the democrats are up to something like 25, 23, something like that. But the republicans are doing a similar thing. And so, with something that Chris and I have both studied, this emerging rural urban divide, it seems as if there are just some districts that the other party is not going to contest because it's not worth their time, effort and energy to do that. The problem then becomes, though, in a year in which it might be a wave election, and presidential elections do have increased turnout you may not have somebody in place to capitalize on something that might come around. And that is something that both parties actually to be competitive should be working on, this notion that give, as we were talking about earlier, give voters a choice. We can't have a choice if there is one essential person in the general election. And that is something that the parties need to work on. And in a democracy, we need two competitive parties.

Larimer: And Stephen, you were asking too about congressional races and I think where you could see that is you look at the congressional races the last several cycles in Iowa where it has been democrats will win Dubuque County, Blackhawk County, Johnson, Linn and Polk and how much weight those have in those congressional districts. I think that is where you can potentially see -- I would imagine that is where democrats are looking to make gains because we've seen congressional races where a candidate in the third district wins Polk County and that is enough to carry the district. So, you think about the second congressional district where we are, how important Blackhawk County is going to be, how important Dubuque County is going to be. Dubuque County has been sort of trending to the right a little bit. If having Harris on the top of the ticket shifts that margin a little bit that could be really important for that race. And then you move down to the first district too even with Johnson County and some of those others, I think just the margins there, they may not be enough to change the outcome but it may be enough to start a trend in a certain direction.

Henderson: You both have I believe this year published a paper about Iowa's three congressional districts and how surprisingly competitive they are compared to the rest of the country. Donna Hoffman, what piqued your interest? And why did you two do this?

Hoffman: So, the swing state concept is something Chris and I have written quite a bit about actually and it's kind of a continuation of that. So, Iowa has competitive congressional elections and it has been historically true. So, if you look at in the House nationally about 94% of incumbents will get re-elected. In Iowa it's about 85%. So, there is a little bit of a gap there. We can go back to just 2018 and three of the four seats were held by democrats. So, it's the notion of a swing in Iowa. It happens at the presidential level, it can even happen in these congressional elections and they can be competitive. So, while the fourth district typically isn't competitive because of the dynamics there, one, two and three, districts one, two and three, and this even goes back to the previous redistricting, have been competitive. And so, Cook Political Report currently has one and three as either lean or likely republican but we call that competitive and the second district has the potential to do that, maybe not in this cycle. And so, the breakdown of democrats to republicans to no party voters in those districts tend to be competitive as well and key to that in Iowa is also attracting those no party voters. And so, finding the right issues, getting the right cycle in terms of midterm, presidential election, turnout, all of those things can combine to make for some surprising results in that regard.

Henderson: Christopher Larimer, the democratic campaign congressional committee, I don't remember which order the Cs are in, but DCCC has invested in the first and the third congressional districts, some ad buys there. Are they really on the national map, are those races?

Larimer: I think you could certainly make a case that the third congressional district is just given the political geography of the district. As I mentioned earlier, we've seen a candidate with former Congresswoman Axne winning the district by just winning one county, just winning Polk County, and that was enough. Now that was before redistricting. But I think they're still looking at the third congressional district as one that is a potential pickup or at least going to be incredibly competitive. The first congressional district, the margin there, going back to the 2022 election I think a lot of people looked at that as that was a close district and it was. So, I think it's hard to say at this point I guess because we're still kind of trying to figure out what are the atmospherics of this election going to be? As strange as that sounds, we've had so much change over the summer, we're trying to figure out which party sort of has the momentum going in. I think back to the first questions about the convention, that is the third of three bumps that the democratic ticket had this summer. Now we're trying to see okay how long is that bump going to sustain itself? Is that going to be a temporary bump in the polls or is that going to continue to affect the probability of a democrat winning in the first district?

Henderson: So, you mentioned atmospherics. Are you talking about issues? Or are you talking about personalities?

Larimer: I think both, just sort of the general trend in sort of the feelings within the electorate. What sort of -- what are the issues that are activating the electorate? And which side of the electorate feels like it has momentum going into November?

Murphy: This may be a little early too because of very recent changes at the top of the ticket but I'm curious to ask you about the so-called Obama Trump voters, which we had a lot of in Iowa. It was very critical in recent election cycles. Iowa was home base for those swing voters who voted for both Barack Obama twice and then Donald Trump. Again, it's early but I'm wondering if you have any perspective, Chris we'll start with you on this, about the change at the top of the ticket for democrats from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. Does that have any impact on those kinds of voters? Are they sticking with Trump, those Obama Trump voters, are they sticking with Trump? Or could they be swayed do you think by Kamala Harris to vote democrat again?

Larimer: That is a great question. I just don't have the data on that. It would be a great study to do, just look at all of the Mississippi River counties particularly where that was concentrated and go down and try to identify who those voters are and understand, first of all, how likely are they to vote in the election? Are they more motivated to vote this year than they have been in the past? And then try to get a sense of which way are they leaning? I think at this point it's just hard to say.

Murphy: That would be an interesting thing to watch this fall.

Larimer: Absolutely, absolutely.

Gruber-Miller: Another group of voters that are out there that the pollsters like to describe as double haters, people who had a negative opinion of both President Joe Biden and former President Trump. I'm curious if there's any data, Donna Hoffman, about whether these folks might be feeling differently with a change at the top of the democratic ticket?

Hoffman: I don't know that there's any good data on that. But there certainly is kind of some anecdotal evidence I think that Kamala Harris doesn't have at least the benefit of -- she has the benefit of not having that baggage, so to speak, that Joe Biden had. She is less of a known quantity in that sense. And even though she was part of the Biden administration. And I think if you watched her speech last night that was one of the things she really attempted to do was to define herself in her own unique way, not talking a lot about the administration and what the administration has done, but talking about herself on her own terms. And I think that goes some way as an appeal to those people who weren't open to either Trump or Biden, but now Biden is not in that equation. We can presume that they're still not open to Trump, I think. But the question is will they stay home or will they vote for Kamala Harris? And I think that is the challenge that the democrats have. And again, I think the convention was very much geared to expanding their tent to that big tent to particularly reach out to those independents and to those disaffected republicans. And so, we'll see if that -- I think that is a very good strategy. But can it be successful? I think that is another question.

Henderson: Chris Larimer, both major parties have vice presidential nominees that come from the Midwest. Former President Trump said people don't vote on the Vice President at some point this summer. Is that true?

Larimer: For the most part, yes. I think voters are still thinking top of the ticket when they're going into vote. That is who they most identify with. That is what they think about when they think about American politics or thinking about the presidency. And Donna has written about that. But I think for the Democratic Party in particular, having someone like Governor Walz on the ticket may be another boost to that enthusiasm that we keep talking about. That seems to be -- the last several election cycles we've heard democrats talking about that they need a candidate who comes from rural America, in this case a gun owning rural American that they can identify with, someone who used to have an A+ rating with the NRA. For some democrats that may be a way to just reach those -- or for the Democratic Party that may be a way to reach some voters that they have been struggling to reach. It may not be enough to move them over, but it's another method for outreach I guess to a group of voters that democrats clearly see as being very important for winning elections, in particular statewide elections in a state like Iowa.

Henderson: Did you have something to add?

Hoffman: I wanted just to add to what Chris has said is that one of the reasons why political scientists have a difficulty in predicting things is that these things happen at the margins. And so marginally Tim Walz can make a difference for some voters. Debates, we have a debate coming up. Debates can marginally matter. We don't necessarily know how they're going to matter marginally. But again, in an era in which we know that these elections are decided very narrowly, the margins can matter.

Murphy: Talk about some issues here. When you hear from democratic candidates or maybe see the campaign ads on our TVs, the democrats are focusing on abortion policy and here in Iowa especially education. Republicans say they're going to be able to motivate voters based on the economy and immigration. Donna Hoffman, which party is right? Do you have any data that says which of those kind of two pots of issues will motivate voters more?

Hoffman: Well, both parties are right because they're tailoring those to their base and it's a game of turnout. It is a game of, especially on something like reproductive rights, there is very good data, public opinion data that pretty vast majorities as we can call that in the United States support reproductive freedom, reproductive rights. But public policy has not followed that. How much as a voter do you care about that issue? Well, the democrats want you to care about that and want to move you off the couch with that. The republicans want to appeal to the fear of immigrants. That has been a recurring theme with them recently and how that is a threat to the American way of life. And so, they want to motivate their base voters to get them up off the couch on that particular issue. So, the parties are using this strategy to try to activate their voters, keep their active voters going and happy, but also to pull some of those marginal people back in to the election. And we know in a presidential election year that turnout goes up and in recent presidential election years turnout has been historically high. And so that is another question coming in is will we see some depressing of that, those record turnout levels? Or will it be a record again?

Henderson: Stephen?

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, so we have yet to talk about the third major party in Iowa, the Libertarian Party. This party is running candidates for Congress in three of the four congressional districts, but all three candidates face a potential challenge that could keep them off the ballot. When we look at competitive congressional elections in Iowa, how much could having a libertarian on the ballot or not make a difference, Chris?

Larimer: Well, I think it's a little hard to say. On some level, you look at the fourth congressional district, the margins that we've seen in that district before and after redistricting would suggest that a libertarian on the ballot would not necessarily affect the outcome there. The first and second districts that's a little bit different story where you're going to have some differences there at the margin. Again, it may not affect the outcome that we would predict at this point of what to expect in November, but you could see some differences in the margin. If you get down to the third congressional district, the one that is probably the most competitive, if that comes down to a few thousand votes here and there and it's a case where you have just Polk County versus the rest of the district, then that may be a district that you look at and can start to see a difference there. But again, it would be getting at what Donna talked about with the margins there. So, are these voters who are showing up for the first time because a Libertarian candidate is on the ballot? Or are they voters who are mobilized for a particular reason? Are they voters who are going to vote democrat or were going to vote republican but now are voting libertarian? All of that is kind of hard to dissect with the publicly available data that we have at this point.

Henderson: Donna Hoffman, 2026 is just around the corner.

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Henderson: What are you seeing from statewide candidates like the Governor, the Attorney General, in regards to how they are planning and looking ahead?

Hoffman: I don't see a lot of it. I think obviously democrats have a problem I think within the state of having had a lot of their candidates in the previous election, statewide candidates knocked out, the Attorney General, for example, the Treasurer. You have Rob Sand who is the one statewide elected democrat who seems to be carrying the state hopes in the democratic party. The republicans have a deeper bench I think in that sense in the state. But I still think it's too early to look that far ahead. But good parties in states always need to be doing that and always need to be developing talent. If you have a party that is disillusioned or demoralized that can be really difficult. We know parties have recruitment challenges if some of the people they're trying to recruit think it's not going to be a good year for the party, whatever it is. But you always have to be developing that talent. And having the Caucuses now being differentiated in the state between the democrats and the republicans where I think it's fair to say we can give up on democratic caucuses mattering at a national level in this state, but maybe not for the republicans, although I think their lifespan is probably short-lived as well. But that gives the republicans an advantage as well and it gives them an enthusiasm advantage because you can go and see the republican presidential candidates in a couple of years, maybe in six months, who knows. And so that has been a balancing act, it has benefited both parties previously, and now it's not going to benefit both parties and that's another thing that republicans have as an advantage in this state. And again, going back to the conventions, we saw Brenna Bird, we saw Jeff Kaufmann having roles to play in the Republican Convention, we didn't see democrats at the Democratic Convention.

Murphy: And speaking of the Caucuses, and we're down to our last minute here, Chris Larimer, it's Iowa Press, it's a political show, I'm contractually obligated to ask a caucus question. So, with the change at the ticket in the Democratic Party, Professor Hoffman didn't sound very optimistic about Iowa democrats' chances of that changing in the near future. Do you have any thoughts on that? If Kamala Harris wins in November is there a chance for Iowa democrats to be first again in 2028?

Larimer: I think that's hard to say. I think at this point it seems that the national Democratic Party has moved on from Iowa. I don't know if Kamala Harris would win, I don't know if that changes their position on Iowa not being first.

Henderson: Well, the party has adopted rules that say no more caucuses, which I guess is a big signal the national Democratic Party has moved on. Sadly, we have to move on because we are done with this conversation. Thanks to both of you for being here on Iowa Press. You can watch episodes of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

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