Iowa elections in 2026

Iowa US Senate: D 47.0 to R 48.0, tossup Republican, well sourced. Iowa Senate race deadlocked as Hinson and Turek vie for Ernst's open seat

Iowa Governor: D 51.0 to R 49.0, tossup Democratic, well sourced. Residency and ethics concerns roil Iowa gubernatorial race as Sand holds narrow edge

House delegation as simulated: 0 D, 3 R, 1 tossup of 4 districts swept.

Model readings of live reporting, not polling. The full Iowa board, with sourcing and the county map where one exists, is on the Midterms 2026 tab of the homepage.

How Iowa votes

Iowa's politics run through its farm economy, small cities and a long tradition of retail campaigning. Once a national bellwether, it has trended Republican in recent cycles while remaining competitive in the right conditions.

Its largest population centers include Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport. Where a state's people live, and what those places do for a living, is the starting point for how Electorate HQ simulations reason about it.

On the ballot in Iowa

Election day is November 3, 2026. Iowa has 2 statewide races and 4 House seats on the ballot.

Statewide races

House districts

Every House seat is elected every two years. Each district below is listed with the counties inside it, computed from the current Census boundary files, wherever those files give a clean answer. Not sure which district is yours? Use the address lookup below.

• Iowa 1st district: Cedar, Clinton, Des Moines, Henry, Iowa, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson and 12 more counties (20 in all)
• Iowa 2nd district: Allamakee, Benton, Black Hawk, Bremer, Buchanan, Butler, Cerro Gordo, Chickasaw and 14 more counties (22 in all)
• Iowa 3rd district: Adair, Adams, Appanoose, Cass, Clarke, Dallas, Davis, Decatur and 13 more counties (21 in all)
• Iowa 4th district: Audubon, Boone, Buena Vista, Calhoun, Carroll, Cherokee, Clay, Crawford and 28 more counties (36 in all)

Find your exact districts

Which district am I in? Iowa districts by county

House districts follow population, not county lines, so a single county can hold several districts and a single district can span many. Each county is listed under the district that holds its center, so if your county appears once above, that district holds most of it and is probably yours. If it appears under several, or if you live near a district line, use the address lookup for the exact answer.

Before you vote in Iowa

Registration deadlines, early voting windows, mail ballot rules and identification requirements are all set at the state level and change between cycles, so the authoritative source is your own election office rather than any national site. The federal directory at vote.gov links to every state's registration system, and your county election office publishes the sample ballot that includes local contests.

The ballot section above covers the federal and statewide offices on the Iowa ballot for November 3, 2026. Each statewide race links to a page with current coverage and an AI-generated simulation of the contest, always labeled as a simulation rather than a poll.

Local races

Local councils and commissions, school boards, judges, sheriffs and municipal offices are also on many Iowa ballots, and they vary block by block. Your county election office publishes the authoritative local sample ballot.

Iowa's weight in Washington

Iowa carries 6 electoral votes, which ranks it 31 of 51 by that measure, and sends 4 voting members to the House.

That arithmetic is why the same national argument lands differently here than in a state of another size: a candidate courting Iowa is competing for a specific share of the map, and the issues below are the ones that share actually turns on.

How Iowa is represented

Iowa is divided into 4 House districts, each drawn to hold roughly the same number of people, while its two Senate seats represent the state as a whole. A campaign here therefore runs two different arguments at once: a local one shaped by whichever district a voter lives in, and a statewide one that has to hold together across all 4.

Electoral votes follow the same arithmetic, House seats plus two, which is why Iowa carries 6 in a presidential year and why small states carry proportionally more weight there than population alone would give them. The district list above shows every district on the 2026 ballot and the counties the boundary files place inside each one.

Issues that weigh heavily in Iowa

Based on the state's industry mix, geography and cost of living, these issues tend to carry structural weight in Iowa elections:

Latest Iowa political headlines

Simulate Iowa

In the Electorate HQ simulator, Iowa is one of 51 delegations that reads current reporting and decides a presidential race issue by issue. Results are AI simulations, clearly labeled, with the reasoning shown for every call. See the methodology for what that does and does not mean.

Analysis covering Iowa

• Twenty-six states elect a senator and a governor on the same day in 2026

  The overlap between the Senate class and the gubernatorial cohort is a coincidence of two unrelated calendars, and it decides where money goes.

• The 2026 Senate map covers 62% of the country and 70% of the states

  Thirty-five of fifty states vote for Senate this year. Weighted by people rather than states the share drops, and that gap is the design of the chamber.

• Election night is reported in 3,142 counties and decided in 435 districts

  The unit America counts votes in and the unit America allocates House seats in are different shapes, and they do not nest inside each other.