Clinton  |  Trump  ||  General Election Visits

The Hawkeye State went Democratic in 2008 and 2012, but Republicans fared well in 2014, re-electing Gov. Branstad, and electing Sen. Ernst and Reps. Blum and Young.  Voter registration statistics show a trend toward Republicans.

Voter Registration (Active) for November General Election >

	Dem.	Rep.	No Party	Total
2016	629,081 (31.51%)	662,167 (33.17%)	694,005 (34.77%)	1,996,153
2014	602,048 (31.08%)	620,353 (32.02%)	709,447 (36.62%)	1,937,294
2012	621,401 (32.08%)	626,508 (32.35%)	686,649 (35.45%)	1,936,901
2010	663,215 (33.41%)	618,614 (31.16%)	701,320 (35.33%)	1,984,995
2008	698,839 (34.87%)	592,397 (29.56%)	711,705 (35.52%)	2,003,901

Iowa voters were quite familiar with the two major candidates from their caucus campaigns.  Recall that Donald Trump finished a surprising first ahead of Ted Cruz while the Democrats had "an historically close result" on caucus night.  Although the media focus shifted elsewhere after the Feb. 1 caucuses, on the Democratic side competition for delegates between the Clinton and Sanders camps continued to the State Convention on June 18.  There were still tensions between the two sides at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.  The drawn-out process very likely used up some of the energy of Clinton volunteers, and the Democratic campaign was not able to turn its ful attention to the general election until July.  Nonetheless through phone calls, in person contacts, and texts the campaign reported 1.3 million conversations with Iowa voters between June and Labor Day. 

The Republican ticket spent significantly more time in state than the Democrats (Trump and Pence made a total of 16 visits totalling 18 days compared to 6 visits and 7 days for Clinton and Kaine).  Meanwhile, as elsewhere, Clinton swept up newspaper endorsements (+).  The Democratic campaign was relatively small compared to operations in other battleground states, but by Election Day it pointed to "an unrivaled organization that is now primed to deliver the margin of victory (+)."

Although the total number of votes tallied in the presidential contest was very close to that in 2012 (just a tad lower at 1,566,031 votes compared to 1,582,180) the turnout profile was markedly different.  Some 212,000 voters who voted in 2012 did not vote in 2016, many of them Democrats, while 244,000 voters turnout out in 2016 who had not voted in 2012, and many of these supported Trump.  The result was 9.41 percentage point margin for Trump compared to Obama's 5.81 percentage point margin over Romney in 2012.  The fact that Clinton managed to carry just six of 99 counties was somewhat astounding.