In their fight to flip the House, Democrats are eyeing gains in what may seem an unlikely spot: Iowa.
Two GOP seats in the Hawkeye State have emerged as true battlegrounds in the final stretch of the campaign, as some election forecasters have moved Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, and Zach Nunn, in the 3rd, into their most competitive race column less than a month before voters go to the polls.
Both GOP incumbents appear to retain a slight edge in districts won by former President Trump in 2020. But the margins are thin, and the late moves by the independent handicappers — combined with recent polls indicating Vice President Harris has cut drastically into Trump’s lead across Iowa — have broadened the front lines of the razor-tight race for the House, lending Democrats new hopes that they can pick up seats in a state that’s trended red in recent cycles.
The factors driving the shift are as varied as the districts themselves, but Democratic campaign operatives say Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket, where she replaced President Biden in July, is driving much of the ground-game energy that’s boosted their chances of unseating Iowa’s most vulnerable House Republicans. And outside experts say there’s evidence to back the claims.
“Enthusiasm for Biden would not drive the turnout that I think Democrats need in the population centers in order to make the 1st and 3rd districts competitive,” said Rachel Paine Caufield, co-chair of the political science department at Drake University in Des Moines.
David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster that moved both........