The urban-rural gap in Iowa politics

 

First of all, it should be noted that the majority of Iowa's 99 counties have been losing population for decades.

Source:  Wikimedia Commons

In the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump won 93 of Iowa's 99 counties.   Joe Biden won 6, including the 5 most populous.

The 6 counties that Biden won comprise 40% of Iowa's population, which includes the state's 3 largest cities -- Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Davenport -- as well as Iowa City (University of Iowa) and Ames (Iowa State University).

Biden received 51% of his vote from the 6 counties that ended up in the blue column.  Trump received 72.5% of the mostly white, aging residents who were sitting ducks for the MAGA message.

Source:  Wikipedia

According to Merriam-Webster, the first-known use of 'sitting duck', as in an easy or defenseless target, occurred in 1942.

Other coinages from the same year include:

1. atomic reactor
2. brownout
3. buzz bomb
4. dimout
5. ginormous
6. golden shower

Post inspired by

New York Times, 1/8/2024

There is no single reason that over the past 15 years the Upper Midwest saw Iowa turn into a beacon of Donald J. Trump’s populism, North and South Dakota shed storied histories of prairie populism for a conservatism that reflected the national G.O.P., and Illinois and Minnesota move dramatically leftward. (Sandwiched in between, Wisconsin found an uncomfortable parity between its conservative rural counties and its more industrial and academic centers in Milwaukee and Madison.) 

No state in the nation swung as heavily Republican between 2012 and 2020 as Iowa, which went from a six-percentage-point victory for Barack Obama to an eight-point win for Mr. Trump in the last presidential election.

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