Iowa
Iowa voters shifted left in 2025. Is a blue wave coming in 2026?
In five of six legislative special elections last year, Democrats overperformed by more than 20 percentage points compared with the 2024 presidential election.
Here are the top 2026 midterm races to follow in Iowa
Des Moines Register Chief Politics Reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel breaks down Iowa’s top races ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Iowa Democrats ended 2025 on a high note, winning a Dec. 30 special election in Des Moines’ western suburbs by a wider margin than during the presidential election.
That capped off a year in which Democrats won four of the six legislative special elections and ended Republicans’ supermajority in the Iowa Senate.
In five of those six special elections, Democrats overperformed by more than 20 percentage points compared with 2024.
They’ll look to build off the momentum going into the pivotal 2026 midterms that will include open races for governor and U.S. senator as well as regular Iowa congressional and Legislature elections.
Whether 2025’s Democratic Party victories are bellwethers or blips will play out this year.
Democrats saw Iowa special elections consistently tilt left
Though Republicans won in two special elections in 2025s, their margins of victory were significantly smaller than 2024.
Republican Wendy Larson won December’s special election for the vacant seat in House District 7 by 40 points. That’s a wide margin, but wide margins are expected for Republicans in that part of the state: The party holds strong advantages in voter registration totals in Calhoun, Pocahontas, Sac and Webster counties, where the district is located.
And even that 40-point margin represented a shift toward the Democrats.
In the 2024 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris by 50 points in House District 7. Democrats didn’t even field a candidate for the district’s legislative seat that year.
The 10-point shift toward Democrats from the 2024 presidential election to the 2025 special election in House District 7 was the smallest of any legislative district that held a special election last year.
Each of the five other districts shifted toward Democrats by more than twice as much.
Moreover, those special elections were spread across the state.
Democrats consistently gathered a greater share of votes from Senate District 1 in the northwest part of the state to House District 100 in the state’s southeast corner, ranging from 10 to 26 percentage points.
The two seats Democrats flipped in special elections — Senate Districts 1 and 35 — each shifted to the left by more than 20 points compared with the 2024 presidential election.
In Senate District 1, Trump outpaced Harris by 11 percentage points in 2024, while Democrat Caitlin Drey won the seat there by more than 10 points in August.
In Senate District 35, Trump’s victory margin in Senate District 35 was more than 21 points. In January 2025, Democrat Mike Zimmer won the district’s Senate seat by 3½ points.
In 2022, Republicans won both those seats by even wider margins than Trump in 2024.
Should Democrats expect momentum to carry over to 2026?
Pushing voters to the left in six isolated special elections is one thing. Parlaying those successes into November’s midterm elections is quite another.
Turnout was key in 2025’s special elections, and it will be again in 2026.
The numbers of votes cast in 2025’s special elections equaled roughly one-quarter to one-third the votes cast in the 2024 presidential election in those districts.
Turnout should be higher in November’s midterms.
Since 2000, the percentage of Iowa’s registered voters who have participated in the midterm elections typically has hovered around 55%. (About 75% of registered Iowans usually vote in presidential elections.)
But what determines an election is less about the number of people who show up and more about who those people are.
An increased share of those who went to the polls in the special elections were Democratic voters — or, perhaps more accurately, a greater number of Republican voters stayed home.
Republicans will be working to get those voters back to the polls this November.
Republicans maintain advantage in Iowa voter registration data
The leftward shift in last year’s special elections has yet to materialize in Iowa’s voter registration numbers.
Over roughly the past 15 years, voter registrations in Iowa have swung heavily toward Republicans.
Democrats, conversely, have lost 200,000 voters in that time, and Republicans have opened up an overall advantage of more than 10 percentage points.
Despite their victories at the ballot box in 2025, Democrats have not chipped into Republicans’ significant lead in voter registrations.
Last year was the first since at least 2000 when the share of active voters who were Republicans was at least 10 percentage points higher than the share who were Democrats throughout the entire year.
Republicans began 2026 with nearly 200,000 more active registered voters than Democrats, among their largest leads this century.
Those two parties do not comprise the entirety of Iowa’s electorate — a large share of Iowa’s active voters are not registered to a party, and a smaller amount are registered to other parties, including Libertarians.
And just because a voter is registered as a Democrat or Republican doesn’t mean they’ll vote for their party’s candidates.
But the large voter deficit indicates Democrats are starting from a less favorable position.
Their special election victories in 2025 proved they can win elections, but they’ll need to make up some ground to replicate that success in 2026.
Tim Webber is a data visualization specialist for the Register. Reach him at twebber@registermedia.com and on Twitter at @HelloTimWebber.
One Iowa high school athletic department is facing extremely low numbers in multiple sports, prompting school officials to begin searching for programs to share with.
Exira-EHK High School has already cancelled the upcoming 2026 Iowa High School Athletic Association varsity football season, going instead with a junior varsity-only series of games. According to a report by Western Iowa Today, they have also shared softball with Audubon.
The Exira-EHK/Audubon softball team is currently ranked No. 1 in Class 1A of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union. A total of 11 of the players on the 23-girl team are from Exira-EHK. They are 15th in the latest High School On SI Iowa Top 25 State Rankings as they prepare for postseason play.
Enrollment For Exira-EHK School District Continues To Drop
Enrollment at the high school level for the Spartans is down by over 20 students, with the expectation for even more of a drop in overall enrollment moving into the 2026-2027 school year.
Tom Petersen, the Exira-EHK athletic director, was part of a community-wide meeting earlier this week alongside Trevor Miller, the school superintendent.
“I’m going to continue to campaign, keep working (to get more kids out),” Petersen said. “It’s just part of being an AD and a coach. I have tried every scenario that I can to try and make it that our kids could go and play varsity (football).
“It’s not the state’s fault, it’s not our fault; it’s the middle of a two-year cycle. I coached here for 20 years in football and it’s crushing (to not have a program).”
Petersen also mentioned during the meeting that he is struggling to fill several coaching vacancies, including the head boys basketball position. He said that they have received zero applications for that coaching vacancy.
Spartans Currently Share Multiple Sports With Audubon
Along with baseball and softball, the Exira-EHK school district also shares girls basketball, boys wrestling, girls wrestling, boys tennis and girls tennis with Audubon. Petersen is proposing to the school board a share agreement for boys basketball, boys track and field, and girls track and field, in addition to the other sports.
Last fall, the Spartans went 4-5 overall, as they won 22 games over a stretch of seasons after going 0-7 in 2020. Exira-EHK was 12-1 in 2013 and had three consecutive years of at least eight wins after that.
The schools are a combination of the towns of Exira, Elk Horn and Kimballton.
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CORALVILLE, Iowa (KCRG) – Coralville Police say a person has drowned at the Coralville Aquatic Center Tuesday afternoon.
The call went out shortly after 4 p.m. to 1513 7th Street for a drowning report.
Officers, lifeguards and paramedics gave lifesaving aid to the person. They were taken to the University of Iowa Health Care, where they were pronounced dead.
The identity of the victim has not been released. The incident is under investigation.
Copyright 2026 KCRG. All rights reserved.
Iowa
Iowa City Man who ran over people in homeless encampment sentenced to nearly two decades in prison
IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) – An Iowa City man who pleaded guilty to driving into five people at a homeless encampment last August has been sentenced to serve nearly two decades in prison.
On August 15, 2025, Roman Aguilar Ventura drove his vehicle while under the influence through an encampment near Shelter House, an organization that assists homeless people.
Ventura pleaded guilty to several charges in March, including Operating While Under the Influence, two counts of Willful Injury Resulting in Bodily Injury, and three counts of Assault with a Dangerous Weapon. He also pleaded guilty to Driving While Barred and Driving While License Denied or Revoked.
In addition to his sentence, Ventura will also be subject to a six-year suspension of his drivers license, in addition to substance abuse treatment.
Copyright 2026 KCRG. All rights reserved.
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