Within the Margin

And most importantly…a chance to mention the Lincoln Highway!

Coalitions determine election outcomes, and the current sorting of the American electorate is leaving Democrats with a greater share of the highest-engagement, highest-propensity voters. This has limited value in high-turnout, national elections. But it raised the party’s floor in the 2022 midterms despite then-President Biden’s unpopularity, and it has contributed to quite a few impressive performances in special elections taking place outside the normal calendar (i.e. outside November). That includes some victories in reddish territory, and a 2024 near-win in a deep, deep red part of eastern Ohio. That Ohio race turned out not to be remotely indicative of a Democratic comeback in the Buckeye State, as Trump went on to win the district and state by considerably larger margins than he had four years earlier. Instead, it served as a demonstration that many of the most-engaged voters are Dems even in heavily Republican areas, making them a higher proportion of the electorate in a low-turnout contest.

And so it is that we have last week’s impressive triumph for Democrat Mike Zimmer in Iowa’s 35th Senate District. This was a special election called after incumbent Republican Chris Cournoyer vacated the seat upon her appointment as Iowa’s lieutenant governor. This is a great district: it includes all of Clinton County, and small portions of Jackson and Scott counties to the north and south, respectively. Clinton County is home to Clinton, right on the Mississippi River. It’s the first place I ever visited in Iowa, on my Lincoln Highway road trip back in 2013. The Lincoln enters Iowa on U.S. 30, crossing the Mississippi from Illinois. Clinton’s a cool place, with paddlewheel logo and its river-town vibes; this is the Midwest but maybe with a slightly Southern touch. Until 2020, they had an affiliated minor league baseball team; after MLB’s purge, it’s a collegiate summer league team these days. Clinton (both city and county) have been declining in population for decades. I’m sure it has its issues. But to my eyes in 2013, this district seemed like a cool and unique place to live.

These days, it’s also a very red district. It supported Trump by 21(!) points over Kamala Harris last year. That’s quite a change from the Obama years, when he won this area by about the same margin – twice. But then Democrats began to plummet among the white working-class voters who make up a large portion of the electorate here and in most of Iowa, so it’s firmly Trump Country today. Downballot, this state senate seat flipped to Republicans in 2018 even as Democrats enjoyed a good year nationally; in 2022 Cournoyer was re-elected to the renumbered district by 22 points.

You wouldn’t know that from this special election, though. Zimmer won by almost four points, flipping a seat that will be hard for Democrats to hold in 2026 – but in the meantime gives them a new voice in the GOP-dominated Iowa legislature. He lost the Scott County portion by 12 votes. But he won the small Jackson County portion by over a hundred votes, and the Clinton County portion – which makes up 70% of the district – by a couple hundred. I had a feeling coming into it that this might be brewing, given recent history in special elections along with the timing: a week after Trump’s inauguration seems like a good time for Dems to blow off some steam by voting, even in a contest far removed from the maelstrom in the nation’s capital.

It probably helped, too, that this election took place last Tuesday in the midst of confusion over Trump’s freeze of trillions in grant spending. Every local government and not-for-profit entity that receives any kind of federal money was facing uncertainty over what comes next, without any guidance from an administration hellbent on embodying the Silicon Valley credo of moving fast and breaking things. A day later, the White House rescinded the freeze. But some damage was done, and that may have been reflected in the result – especially in an election with such a tight turnaround, leaving little time for absentee voting. So most voters were likely voting on Election Day itself, and the latest dose of Trump chaos probably did not dispose them favorably to the GOP.

There’s a clear trend in recent years in special elections up and down the ballot, all over the country. But where special elections used to be more indicative of performance in coming general elections, the relationship has changed a bit thanks to Democrats’ increasing dominance among the people most likely to turn out in any given contest. That said, winning in such deep red turf points, at minimum, to Dem voters retaining their engagement despite the national discourse declaring them to be in the midst of a period of wound-licking and navel-gazing.