Like many of you, I have been hosting family during the holidays which has limited my time to write. However, I wanted to leave you all with one last piece to think about as we transition from 2024 into 2025 over the next couple of days. In the post below I offer some quick thoughts on whether there are opportunities for independent candidates to win Iowa elections.

As I’ve been reflecting on 2024 and politics here in the Hawkeye State, I’ve spent a significant amount of time thinking about the future of Iowa politics. I’ve written extensively about the shifts that we seen in presidential preference post-election as well as provided some thoughts on what the Iowa Democratic Party should do moving forward in an effort to win elections again. As an aside, four prominent Iowa Democrats published an open letter to the Party just a few days ago. While the letter does not specifically mention local organizing, it would be a missed opportunity if the strategic planning efforts did not address how to engage with voters in rural Iowa counties moving forward.

As I have lived in a deeply red county for nearly 20 years, I have often thought about whether an independent candidate, running in a state legislative race in the districts which included Marion County, could win in a two-way race against a Republican candidate. It has been clear to me for a long time that Democratic candidates have no pathway to winning a head-to-head vote against Republican candidates who had significant voter registration advantages. As a result, the Democratic candidates who have run, while well intentioned, had no real chance of winning in those deeply red districts. In 2024, the Democrats didn’t even run a candidate in our local Iowa House District.

This last election cycle answered the question for me. After looking at how the handful of independent candidates fared in state legislative races around the state and the share of the vote won by Republican candidates in uncontested races, I am not convinced that an independent candidate for the legislature could be successful, even in a head-to-head race. According to election data from the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office, independent candidates failed to capture more than a third of the popular vote in any of the districts with head-to-head contests against Republican candidates. In fact, the largest share of the popular vote won by an independent candidate in any of those races was around 32% in Iowa House Districts 64 and 100.

Also, take the example of Iowa House District 37 (my House District), represented in the last legislative session by Barb Kniff McCulla. District 37 covers portions of Jasper, Marion, and Mahaska Counties in south central Iowa. As I mentioned above, Rep. Kniff McCulla ran unopposed in 2024 and still received 14,955 votes in her uncontested race.

While this may seem unimportant in the aggregate, receiving nearly 15,000 votes while running unopposed is quite impressive especially when you consider the partisan breakdown of registered voters in the district. As of December 3, 2024, House District 37 contains 10,924 active Republicans, 3,309 active Democrats, and 5,816 active No Party Voters. What this means is that even if every active Republican voted for Kniff McCulla in 2024, nearly 4,000 additional Democrats or No Party Voters did the same.1 In an uncontested race! The bulk of the additional votes most likely came from No Party Voters who are supportive of Republican candidates, but those unaffiliated voters still cast a vote in a race with no other candidate on the ballot.

What this suggests to me is that the Democratic Party made a rational decision to not field a candidate in that specific house district. It also suggests that there is no real pathway for an independent candidate to build a winning coalition of Democrats and No Party Voters in the district either, which helps explain why an independent didn’t emerge here either.

At this juncture, some may be wondering if an independent candidate could win in a statewide or Congressional district race? Is there a pathway to building a winning coalition of Democratic and No Party Voters in Iowa? While I think it would be tough, I would not rule out the possibility that an independent candidate could be successful here in Iowa in a statewide or federal race. To do so, two things would have to happen at a minimum.

First, the Iowa Democratic Party would have to choose not to nominate a candidate to run in the race. With the voter registration advantages that Republicans have in Iowa after the 2024 cycle (more on this in a moment), there is no pathway to victory in a three-way race for an independent candidate.

Second, an independent candidate would have to build a message and campaign that resonated with Democratic voters as well as No Party Voters in the state. According to voter registration data from the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office, active Republican voters outnumber active Democrats by around 190,000 voters as of December 3, 2024. Therefore, in order to win, an independent candidate would have to win a substantial share of the No Party Vote, which totals around 560,000 active voters statewide.

The challenge here is understanding No Party Voters within the state because a substantial share of independent voters nationwide are what political scientists call “leaning independents,” meaning that while they are not affiliated with a party, they hold attitudes about policy similar to registered partisans and behave like partisans in elections. In other words, a “leaning Republican” is likely to have more conservative attitudes about politics and government, and vote for Republican candidates while a “leaning Democrat” is likely to have more liberal attitudes about politics and government, and vote for Democratic candidates in elections.

While political scientists have studied independents in the American electorate for decades, little work has been done by political scientists focused on the Iowa electorate, which means that an independent candidate thinking about running for statewide or federal office in Iowa would lack information and data on Iowa’s No Party Vote while making a decision to run.

So if I were advising that candidate while she or he was still exploring a race, one of the first campaign tasks I would recommend is a comprehensive survey of Iowa’s No Party Voters. Such an effort should include survey items about their ideological worldview, partisan lean, candidate preference over the last few election cycles, policy views, and views on identity issues among other things. This information could then be used to guide campaign strategy and messaging to help build a winning coalition in the general election.

What do you think? Do you think there is a pathway for independent candidates in Iowa? I’ve offered my quick thoughts on the topic above. I’d love to hear what you think, so please use the comment button below to post your comments and questions.

Leave a comment