The Iowa room
Why this seat
Iowa votes further right than it used to and still refuses to give this seat a comfortable margin. Ernst has never won by the number the state's presidential baseline implies she should.
State of the field
An incumbent Republican defending, against a Democratic field the primary has not resolved. No first-party candidate pass is complete, so this room publishes no ledger.
The test
Iowa stays put if the rural counties turn out at their presidential rate in an off year. It becomes live if the midterm drag on the president's party lands at the historical average rather than the mild end of it.
| 2024 certified margin | R+13.2 |
| 2024 margin × 0.78 | −10.3 |
| Midterm drag | +5.6 |
| Incumbent | −3.0 |
| Expected margin | R+7.7 |
| Seat uncertainty (1σ) | ±5.5 |
Model call
88%
Republican gain
Iowa is redder than it was but Ernst's margins have never been comfortable, and midterms punish the president's party here.
Nothing written on this page feeds that number. The method.
Every slot on this board is a typographic monogram. It previously carried painted “house renders” of each sitting member; an audit found the renders were not reliable likenesses — one seat was captioned with a different person’s face entirely — so the class was withdrawn rather than repaired face by face. A wrong face under a right name is a fabrication, not a style. No likeness returns to this board until every figure can be shown from a verified first-party image under identical framing. These are the figures the seat is about, not the full field.
No candidate ledger is published for this seat. A ledger requires a completed first-party source pass — every candidate's own published policy pages, read on the same day, under identical headings and an identical word budget. Until that pass is done, printing a partial board would rate the campaigns that publish against the ones that have not, which is the asymmetry the Standard exists to prevent.
See a finished ledger — GeorgiaThe Georgia room
North Carolina · Senate · Class 2The North Carolina room
Maine · Senate · Class 2The Maine room