Democrats see midterm hope in reliably red Iowa as Trump approval ratings

IOWA — Connie Klug didn’t leave the Republican Party. The party left her, she said.

She was raised in the GOP, considers herself a fiscal conservative and married a registered Republican.

But decades ago, Klug said, she felt the party drifting. The isolation she felt intensified more recently, as she watched her former political comrades turn a blind eye to what she views as President Donald Trump‘s abuses of power.

“It’s astonishing to me how the Republican Party is just looking the other way. Trump continues to stretch the law, and no one’s doing anything,” Klug said from the kitchen of her home in Adel, Iowa, down a long dirt road about a 30-minute drive west of Des Moines.

Klug was hosting several friends for a roundtable with Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democratic state senator and one of a handful of candidates who have at least a fighting chance of flipping Republican-held U.S. House seats in the former swing state that is now reliably red. Trone Garriott is running in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes Des Moines and its suburbs, as well as much of the southwestern part of the state.

In Iowa, registered Republican voters outnumber Democrats by roughly 200,000. Trump handily won the state by 13 percentage points in 2024. Iowa has not voted for a Democratic president since Barack Obama in 2012. The last time Hawkeye voters elected a Democrat to represent them in the Senate was 2008. In the House, it hasn’t happened since 2020. 

Democrats are also grappling with a persistent reputational problem that stretches beyond Iowa. According to a May poll from the Pew Research Center, 59% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of the party, about the same percentage that views the Republican Party unfavorably.

Nevertheless, Trump’s approval ratings continue to fall, prices are up due to the Iran war, and Iowa’s economy is struggling. Democrats are hoping to take back a House majority and provide a check on Trump’s power in his final years in office. And they see Iowa as an important part of that mission.

State Auditor Rob Sand is running a competitive race to turn the governor’s mansion blue. Democrat Josh Turek hopes to upset Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson for the seat Republican Sen. Joni Ernst will vacate.

In House races, Trone Garriott is trying to oust incumbent Republican Rep. Zach Nunn, and former state Rep. Christina Bohannan is due for a rematch with Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa’s 1st District. Bohannan lost in 2024 by less than 800 votes.

CNBC spent three days crisscrossing Iowa, spending time with the leading candidates in each of those House races, where Democrats have arguably their best shot at making gains in the state.

Trone Garriott, a Lutheran pastor who has worked in the nonprofit sector, met with a handful of…