Political Science Professors

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We're in the final weekend before Election Day. We'll talk with two political scientists about the candidates' closing arguments and what's ahead 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, November 1st edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

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[Henderson] We sit here today in the final days and perhaps hours of Campaign 2024. And for the benefit of you, our viewers, we are taping this conversation on Friday morning, so if we don't address something that happens on Friday afternoons, Saturday or Sunday, that's why. Our guests today are two political scientists who are watching the election and maybe doing some research about what is happening in the field. They are Rachel Paine Caufield. She is a Professor at Drake University and Co-chair of the Department of Political Science there. Welcome back, Rachel.

[Paine Caufield] Thanks for having me.

[Henderson] And David Peterson is joining us as well. He is the Lucken Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University. Thanks for being back at the table.

[Peterson] Thanks for inviting me.

[Henderson] Also joining the conversation are Katarina Sostaric of Iowa Public Radio and Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

[Murphy] So, in Iowa we don't have a top of the ticket race here this year. There's no Senate, no statewide race, other than the presidential election obviously. So, we wanted to start with the congressional elections in Iowa. The First District in eastern Iowa, the Third District in Central Iowa seem to be the most likely the most competitive, the most likely to flip. Which of those two, we'll ask each of you and Rachel we'll start with you, which of those two do you think is more likely to be a flip opportunity?

[Paine Caufield] Well, it seems that Mariannette Miller-Meeks from the very beginning of her time in the U.S. House has faced tight elections and of course the tightest of tight elections.

[Murphy] Six votes.

[Paine Caufield] Six votes. So, yeah, we have new congressional districts. I think everybody is kind of feeling out still what these districts mean for these particular representatives. But I think that is probably the best pickup opportunity for democrats right now. I think the third is also very competitive. And in Iowa, because of our nonpartisan redistricting system, that is built into the system. So, we should be thankful. But I think probably Iowa's first congressional district is going to be the democrat's best shot.

[Murphy] David Peterson, what do you think?

[Peterson] Oh, I agree completely. I think the Miller-Meeks/Bohannan rematch is the one that is likely to be the closest and if there is an opportunity for a democratic pickup that is the best opportunity.

[Murphy] The Third District, let's talk about that a little bit real quick, also a competitive one. Zach Nunn, just a first-term incumbent. Dave, how safe do you think his team feels right now?

[Peterson] I mean, I think they're probably a little worried. It's closer than they would like, obviously. It's his first term in office and he defeated an incumbent who had been around for a little while in Cindy Axne in a close, incredibly well-funded race two years ago. I think in retrospect Axne ran a great campaign and it's just the shift in the district was enough to put Nunn over the top. But Lanon Baccam is running a good race this cycle as well. My sense is it's a little bit of an uphill fight though just given the nature of the district.

[Murphy] I wanted to ask you guys about campaign messaging as well as we back out from these individual races for a moment. Rachel, voters, especially in competitive areas like these congressional districts, they see ads on TV, on social media, they get mail in their mailbox, they have people knocking on their doors. Is there anything in the research that says which of those kind of different approaches is most effective in reaching voters?

[Paine Caufield] Well, it really depends on what you want to do with those voters. Persuasion pieces tend not to be, in a very polarized political environment, tend to not be very effective, particularly at this late stage of the game. So, it's not as if there are a whole bunch of democrats out there who are going to receive a mailing and say oh, you know what, I am going to vote for Zach Nunn. That's not really the purpose. Those kinds of campaign activities can be very effective in mobilizing people to go vote and activating them if they're on the fence and maybe deciding whether or not to take time out of their Tuesday. They might say oh, you know what, I should go do this, this is important. And in particular, some people may have received campaign mailers that appear to almost shame them for their voting record or share their neighbor's voting records. There is research demonstrating that that is actually a pretty strong mobilization tactic.

[Murphy] Interesting. Dave?

[Peterson] Yeah, the sweet spot for campaigns and for candidates is, at this point, to identify people who are unlikely to participate unless they are pushed a little bit, but if they do participate are going to vote for that candidate. And that's where the targeting really goes. And that is not necessarily that many people at this point. But those are the ones that they're really trying to mobilize and motivate.

[Sostaric] And in these campaign ads, especially in the first and third congressional districts, we have two democrats who are very heavily focused on abortion, messaging around abortion, two republicans heavily focused on immigration. Dave, are you seeing any evidence that one of those issues is motivating Iowa voters more than the other?

[Peterson] Not that I've seen. I think that those are the right messages, probably the most effective messages for each of the candidates. I think elections tend to take on a narrative about what they're about and this is an example of the two democratic candidates, and really democrats across the country, really trying to make this an election about abortion because they know if it's about abortion, they're likely to win. That has been the result post-Dobbs across this country, even in the most conservative of states. And the flip side is for republicans and conservatives the issue that is probably their best issue is immigration. And so, I think a lot of it is going to come down to the weight that voters place on these two. What am I thinking about? What is the most important thing to me when I enter into the voting booth? And at this point I don't think we know the answer to how people are going to make that decision.

[Sostaric] And these congressional races are so nationalized now. Rachel, is there anything that, any local issues that the candidates are running on or talking about that are important in this election to voters?

[Paine Caufield] Well, I mean, each of these campaigns is really trying to hit as many points as they can. I think Lanon Baccam's campaign in the third has been particularly interesting precisely because so much of it is made up of rural counties in the state and yet democrats are well known for running up the totals in the Metro area in order to win in the third. That's how Cindy Axne was able to win the district. And with the growing suburbs I think that has been an interesting area of contestation, particularly on the issues of abortion and immigration. We know that those are issues that speak to suburban voters. But then Lanon Baccam is kind of interesting because he also has this history with the USDA working with farmers and veterans. And so, for a democratic candidate I think that has really allowed him perhaps to diversify the message that national democrats might bring to the race. So, there are always those kind of circumstances. It's a match between the candidate and the district.

[Henderson] Dave, did you have something you wanted to add?

[Peterson] I was just going to add, Baccam has, in some of the ads that I've seen, talked a little bit about the school voucher position as well, which Zach Nunn favored that when he was an Iowa legislator. But that's not a federal issue. As a member of Congress, that is not an issue that they really deal with. But because of the unpopularity in at least some parts of the state he is trying to sort of hang that around Zach Nunn's neck even though, again, it's not a congressional issue.

[Murphy] So at least some politics is still local?

[Peterson] Yes.

[Paine Caufield] Some. A little bit.

[Henderson] Speaking of local, David, you live in the fourth congressional district. We haven't yet mentioned it. Ryan Melton, who was on this program a few weeks ago, said part of the reason he ran again was to build up the Democratic Party in that district. Describe what you're seeing as a political scientist who lives in that district what is happening.

[Peterson] Melton is running a valiant effort. I describe Baccam as an uphill fight. This doesn't even compare. The fourth district is the most conservative, most republican district in the state. I think Randy Feenstra is likely to win this one by a lot. But yeah, Melton is trying to play the long game for the Democratic Party, that it's necessary to have candidates out there to reach out to some voters so they don't feel isolated, so they don't feel alone, that they actually think the party might be interested in them and it helps recruit future candidates. So, in the state legislative races or in other races, to get people to engage in the political system means that perhaps they might think about running for some office, maybe not Congress, but for State Senate, for state legislature, for county supervisor, for some of these other offices to try to revitalize the Democratic Party in the fourth district.

[Henderson] Rachel Paine Caufield, let's turn to the second where you have Sarah Corkery, who has been mentioned as a democrat who has mentioned state issues because she has argued that motivates voters. She is the democrat from Cedar Falls running against incumbent Ashley Hinson, a republican from Cedar Rapids, who by the way has been this week campaigning for a colleague in the U.S. House in Arizona and on Sunday she'll be campaigning in the third district with Zach Nunn. So, is she the republican among these four who are running for re-election in Iowa, sort of the rising star in that GOP constellation?

[Paine Caufield] Yes. I think she in many ways, first of all, this is a pretty secure race for her. It's hard to envision a world where she loses this race. It's not the fourth, but it's a pretty secure race for her. At the same time though, this is exactly the image that the Republican Party has elevated for the past few election cycles. They really have put forward an effort to appeal to suburban women voters and she is precisely the kind of person that they want to put out front for their campaign efforts around the country.

[Murphy] Iowa voters, as they turn over their ballots this year, will see a couple of questions about proposed constitutional amendments. And we wanted to touch on those real quick. One of them, and Rachel I'll start with you on this one, deals with the line of succession in the Governor's Office and detailing specifically the duties of the lieutenant governor. It seems like this is one when I've talked to leaders at the Statehouse of both parties that there is not a whole lot of opposition to other than maybe concern that a lieutenant governor could become governor without being elected. I'm just curious if you're hearing from people about this particular constitutional amendment and what you're hearing people talking about it?

[Paine Caufield] I think one of the interesting things is that I haven't heard a lot of conversation about either of our constitutional amendments that are on the ballot this year. This is in many ways, it follows what most states do and what the federal government does, it just simply provides for a line of succession. We have seen instances recently in the state where clarifying the line of succession is helpful. And so, it just kind of makes that formal as part of the state's constitution. I haven't heard a lot of controversy about this. I've heard some people express concern not only about the lieutenant governor, but potentially about the president pro-tem then moving up in the chain of succession, somebody who is selected by party leaders rather than voters for that role. But this is a pretty standard practice in governmental bodies at the state and federal level.

[Murphy] Yeah, and as a reminder to folks, it needed some clarification because it is a remnant of our system where the governor and lieutenant governor used to be elected separately.

[Paine Caufield] Exactly, yeah.

[Henderson] Katarina?

[Sostaric] Onto the other constitutional amendment, proposed constitutional amendment, part of it would change language in the Constitution from every citizen of the U.S. shall be entitled to vote, to only a U.S. citizen will be entitled to vote. Dave, this was also something that was not that controversial when it was in the legislature because it's already the law. But now it's starting to get more attention. Why do you think that is?

[Peterson] It's getting more attention in part because there are, for lack of a better term, conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud being committed by non-citizens. And there's no evidence of widespread numbers. There's a handful of folks who are non-citizens who have registered to vote and an even smaller number who have voted. It's never been enough to swing an election. It has never been enough to change an outcome. But it has become a talking point as former President Trump has talked about concerns about election security and has made already accusations of voter fraud going on, relatively baseless accusations of voter fraud going on in this cycle. This sort of feeds into that and it sort of becomes this partisan talking point.

[Sostaric] I also heard some concerns from kind of the other side of the issue where people are saying, this would prevent, in the future prevent if Iowa wanted to legalize non-citizen, legal non-citizens to vote in local elections, for example, would this do that?

[Peterson] Yeah, it would. It would prevent localities from, school districts for instance, from allowing non-citizens to vote. There is a growing, but very small number, of communities around the country that do that. And it's often something like a school district where we have folks who are non-citizens who are legal immigrants in the country whose children go to the school and so there is a thought that they should have say in the school board and school policy. I haven't heard of any Iowa community asking for that or even thinking about that. But it would bar that in the future.

[Henderson] Rachel Paine Caufield, in 2010 there was a vigorous campaign surrounding judicial retention elections. There are judicial retention elections every cycle.

[Paine Caufield] Yes.

[Henderson] This cycle isn't getting much attention.

[Paine Caufield] It's not getting much attention, except there are a group of people, so Justice David May is on the ballot, there have been I think it's not well-funded, it's not well-publicized but there are certainly rumblings and circulation of opinion surrounding the race, particularly among democrats who are frustrated by his opinion in the abortion case. And every Iowans should take this vote seriously. The decision on whether or not to retain a judge is a really important decision, importantly in this case and notably in this case. If David May is removed from the bench in a retention election, which I think is unlikely, but if that were to happen then the merit selection system would select his replacement and the Governor would be responsible for appointing a replacement. So, it's hard to see that you would see any sort of partisan shift as a result of a no vote right now. So, I think because of that we haven't seen a lot of political mobilization around it.

[Murphy] So, let's talk about that presidential race here. In Iowa we came into this cycle assuming Iowa wouldn't be a competitive state and still seems to be that case given we don't see the campaigns here. But again, reminding the timing of folks, we're taping on Friday morning. There will be a new Iowa Poll out, if history is an indicator, by the time this show is airing on Sunday. But as we sit here, the most recent one we had was in late September and it showed a much closer race than I think a lot of people expected here. Donald Trump leading by only four percentage points over Kamala Harris. Rachel, do you believe that poll?

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[Paine Caufield] Well, first of all, everything is within the margin right now. I don't know what I believe regarding polls. Pollsters have learned a lot of lessons over the past several cycles and I think every pollster has to make some decisions about weighting their sample and figuring out who they're polling. There is some difficulty with reaching certain kinds of voters now. So, it's harder and harder to get a representative sample. But at the end of the day, it's within the margin of error. So, statistically I'm not sure that poll tells us anything and I'm not sure a new poll will tell us anything. We're seeing this across swing states as well. This is a closely divided population and the nature of polling is that there is uncertainty. I'm not sure how much we're learning from the polls at this point.

[Murphy] Let me ask you, Dave, Donald Trump has won this state twice already by I believe 9 and 10 points. I think I'm close to the mark there anyway. Is it possible Kamala Harris makes this that much more competitive?

[Peterson] I mean, I think so. Rachel is absolutely right that pollsters fight the last war. They figure out what they messed up with last time and if anything, they over adjust. And one of the things we're seeing this cycle across the country is all of the polls are sort of converging to close. More polls are converging to essentially a tie than we would expect. We would expect one random poll to be weird. I'm old enough to remember the 2022 Iowa Poll that had Grassley up only a handful of points in a race he won by double digits. So, sometimes we get these weird things just from noise and sampling. And we don't seem to be getting that this time. But we are seeing in lots of states that the race is closer than it has been in the past. There was a poll in Kansas that had Trump only up 4, which I don't believe, but Kansas did come out and support a ballot initiative on abortion. And again, we could be seeing some shifting in some states. And so, the state could be closer than it had. If Trump loses this state, he's in a lot of trouble because he has lost a lot of other states before he has lost Iowa.

[Sostaric] So, people who aren't working in politics or have jobs like us often will ask -- are elections always this contentious? Is this a new level of crazy? So, Rachel, I'm going to put this question to you. Is this more contentious than all of the past elections? Or does it just always seem like that?

[Paine Caufield] Well, definitely always seems like that. And by the time we get to these final days, I've been calling it silly season, the past week has been a roller coaster of bizarre news stories one right after another coming from the campaigns. You have gaffs and missteps. You have stunts and everybody is trying to do anything they can. This is where you literally just start throwing things at the wall and see what sticks. But every campaign matters and every campaign we hear that this is the most consequential campaign of our life. They are all consequential. They all matter. They all elect leaders who will determine policy for the entire nation. I'm disappointed sometimes that people don't pay more attention to lower-level races. I think those actually many times are more consequential. And so, we should direct some focus there. But overall, the nature of the personalities as such, Donald Trump is inherently a contentious candidate. He enjoys that antagonism of the campaign trail. He enjoys the fight. So, in that sense I do think we have a courser campaign discourse than we may have had in the past. But I'm not sure that the overall outcome necessarily is more or less important.

[Henderson] Dave?

[Peterson] Yeah, I've never seen a campaign like this. We've never had this kind of a switch of a major party candidate this late in the process. And that shakes everything up. That literally changes everything. Normally a presidential candidate spends a lot of time in Iowa in January and gets to know people and people get to know them over a year, 14, 16 months and Harris didn't get to do that. She had to drop out of the sky essentially as the democratic nominee and from whole cloth construct a campaign, go through all of that process in this incredibly compressed timeframe. And that -- we've never seen that before. And the republicans on the other side had to react to that. Donald Trump has complained about how unfair the switch was to him. But there is some truth to that, that they had a plan for how they were going to campaign and how they were going to criticize and attack President Biden and they had to shift overnight. And it took them a little while to sort of figure out how to do that. And we've never seen anything like that before.

[Henderson] So, one of the things that republicans have never done before in Iowa is really emphasize early voting. Rachel, do you think that we're seeing they're doing it, there is parity there. What do you think the outcome will be? Do you think they're pulling people who are Election Day voters? What is going on?

[Paine Caufield] What's going on? The short answer is we're not sure. We haven't seen this before. But all across the country I think the Trump campaign recognizes that their big challenge is getting low propensity voters to vote. That is where much of their effort is going right now. And so, part of that is encouraging early voting, banking as many votes as possible so you can refocus your attention. What we don't know for certain is whether we are redirecting Election Day voters into early vote or whether we're drawing new people in through early voting. And so that is something that I'm sure both campaigns will be taking a long look at after the fact to figure out how early voting is affecting their turnout strategies in specific places but then also nationwide.

[Henderson] Dave, do you have an inkling here?

[Peterson] No. Early voting is still unusual for a lot of voters and it's uncommon, lots of states don't have the same history with it. And I think a lot of the people who are trying to do the deep dives into comparing the early vote numbers to the early vote numbers in 2020, I think that is a fool's errand because 2020, we were in the middle of the pandemic, and so the early vote numbers shot way up in 2020 because nobody wanted to stand in line.

[Murphy] And the rules were relaxed.

[Peterson] And it was partisan. Former President Trump had denigrated early voting and the changing of the rules while the Biden campaign advocated actively for early voting. And so yeah, the democrats ran up the numbers in early voting in 2020. But that was sort of the result of the strategy of the candidates and the sort of reality of the pandemic in 2020 and the bizarre nature of that entire race. And so, this time when people are thinking about it differently, when it's a little bit more of a habit to vote early, perhaps it's not going to be the same type of decision making for voters.

[Henderson] Well, the reality at this table right now is we are out of time for this conversation. Thanks to both of you for being here today.

[Paine Caufield] Thank you.

[Peterson] Thank you.

[Henderson] You may watch every episode of Iowa Press on iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for joining us today.

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Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

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The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.

Elite Casino Resorts a family run business rooted in Iowa. We believe our employees are part of our family and we strive to improve their quality of life and the quality of lives within the communities we serve.

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Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at iowabankers.com.

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