The week before the 2024 election, Iowa Democrats were cautiously optimistic. Polling showed the party could stem their previous losses in the state and maybe even gain on Republican control.

Democrats clung to a distant hope: Could they make Iowa purple again?

The last pre-election poll from the renowned Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll was released the weekend before the election — it showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading President-elect Donald Trump by three percentage points. The poll also showed Democrats favored in two of Iowa’s four congressional districts.

The poll was an odd duck; it pointed to a possible blowout for Harris, while polls nationwide showed the race was in a dead heat. A poll released by Emerson College the same day pointed to a commanding lead for Trump in the state.

Despite the poll’s outlier status, Democratic leaders said it proved Iowa could be competitive again.

While Democratic leaders remained skeptical of the poll, they trumpeted their excitement, saying it signaled Iowa Democrats had a chance to make gains in the state.

It turned out to be false hope.

The polls, it would turn out, were flawed. The Iowa Poll conducted by J. Ann Selzer, an infamous pollster with unrivaled accuracy, was off the mark. Selzer has yet to find a conclusive reason why her poll was so wrong.

Despite Selzer’s poll giving them hope, Iowa Democrats — along with fellow party members across the nation — were decimated. Trump not only won the Hawkeye state, but he did so by his widest margin yet.

The former president improved by 5 percentage points in the state and made gains — as he did across the nation — in Iowa’s Democratic strongholds, including Johnson County, where he improved on his 2020 results by 5.4 percentage points.

While Harris failed to clinch Iowa’s six electoral votes and did not gain enough electoral votes to claim the White House, Democrats in Iowa fell far from closing in on the Republican grasp on the state. They also lost ground in the Statehouse, giving Republicans their widest majority since 1970.

Ultimately, Democrats faced losses up and down the ballot. The party failed to oust any of Iowa’s four incumbent Republican federal representatives. They lost ground in the legislature, losing one net seat in the Senate and three in the House.

It soon became clear: Election night was devastating for Iowa Democrats.

Two days after the election, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart described the results as “an absolute gut punch.”

So, where do Iowa Democrats go from here?

Honing in on economics

The economy was a top concern for voters coming into the 2024 election, with 81 percent of respondents telling the Pew Research Center it was one of their top issues.

Republicans were favored on the issue after sky-high inflation under President Joe Biden ravaged Americans’ pocketbooks with rising prices. It doomed Democrats from the start, making the election an uphill battle neither Harris nor Iowa Democrats were able to scale.

University of Northern Iowa Political Science Professor Donna Hoffman said it was nearly impossible for Democrats to disconnect themselves from the inflation under Biden, even though other parts of the economy were doing well.

“I don’t think there was anything that Democrats were going to say, being the party in power at the presidency, to forestall the perceptions that voters have,” Hoffman said.

The problem wasn’t that Democrats didn’t have a plan for the economy; by Hoffman’s account, they did. Rather, Democrats failed to reach the heart of Americans’ discontent with the economy: high prices.

State Sen. Zach Wahls, D-Coralville, and former Senate Democrat leader said Iowa Democrats need a stronger economic message that gets at the concerns of working-class Iowans, but the party “frankly, didn’t have one.”

“A lot of the issues that [Iowa Democrats] talked about and focused on have an economic component,” Wahls said. “But that’s not the same thing as having a message on the economy.”

Drake Political Science Professor Adrien Halliez said Democrats’ plans for the economy were too niche to resonate and didn’t focus enough on working-class voters within the Democrats’ coalition. He said focusing on the middle class in their messaging and policy platforms alienated the working-class voters that the president-elect won by wide margins.

Essentially, Iowa Democrats failed to effectively respond to voters’ concerns about the economy. Voters didn’t connect with their message. Instead, the state swung toward Trump and Republicans in large margins.

Newly elected Iowa Senate Democrats Leader Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, said to overcome this discontent, Iowa Democrats need a targeted, focused economic message so they can continue to outperform the national party and have a chance at clawing back Republican control.

“There are clearly a lot of folks that are struggling,” Weiner said. “As a whole, the state has been moving more and more red, and we still face the question: What do we do about it? And can we do something about it?”

Though this election cycle’s national headwinds on economic discontent spelled Iowa Democrats’ doom, the party will need to focus on rebuilding an economic messaging to contend with Republicans, Halliez said.

Iowa House Democrats leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, said the national Democrats’ failure to push a strong message on the economy trickled down the ballot, spelling defeat for Iowa Democrats this cycle — despite Iowa Democrats’ efforts to message on the issue.

Iowa Democrats made increasing opportunity for all Iowans one of their key messages in the 2024 election cycle. One of Iowa House Democrats’ main tenets was lowering prices for Iowans. But the message didn’t land.

“A lot of it has to do with the fact that just nationally, people this time saw Republicans as better on the economy than Democrats and didn’t believe us when we said we could do things for the middle class,” Konfrst said. “It certainly wasn’t a lack of communication about the issue. It was clearly just that the message didn’t resonate, and voters didn’t buy it.”

Are all politics national now?

Party leaders say Iowa Democrats must wrestle with a new reality: Could all politics be national? The old moniker that “all politics are local” could be a relic of the past. Iowa Democrats will have to wrestle with these realities as they look into voter data and flesh out plans to hold focus groups and polls in the spring.

Iowa followed a national environment that favored Republicans this election, despite Iowa Democrats’ efforts to capitalize on Iowa Republicans’ unpopular policies like restrictions on abortion access, reforms to Area Education Agencies, and their private school education savings accounts.

However, Iowa Democrats outperformed at the top of the ticket throughout the state, giving them close wins in districts won by Trump and coming close in others. But many candidates didn’t make it across the finish line.

Iowa political scientists say Iowa Democrats will have to discern how much of the election results were because of national headwinds and how much was Iowa voters not buying what Iowa Democrats were selling.

Hoffman, a political science professor at UNI, said much of Iowa Democrats’ shortcomings can be attributed to a new national political environment.

“One of the things we also see in American elections in recent cycles is the notion of nationalization,” Hoffman said. “And I think this is very much an effect that we saw in Iowa, where in a presidential election year, you have a person at the top of the ticket, and people are being very consistent in their voting behavior down the ticket.”

Drake Professor Halliez said Iowa Democrats’ issues are almost indiscernible from the national political environment.

In Hart’s letter to the state central committee, she acknowledged much of what Iowa Democrats felt in November were national pressures.

“Some of what happened on Tuesday was out of our control,” Hart wrote. “This was a national trend. We will be part of the conversation to help determine how Democrats can win again in this country.”

Konfrst said Democrats will be looking hard at the data and talking with voters to see why their message didn’t connect and if it was because national trends were too strong.

“We got to figure out how much of that was because Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, how much of it was Biden fatigue, and how much of it is specific to our candidates,” Konfrst said.

Learning from the winners

Iowa Democrats outperformed Harris, as party leaders expected they would, but in many areas, it was not enough to overcome the 13-point deficit from the top of the ticket.

However, party leaders said they will be taking a hard look at those who won, or lost by small margins, in districts won by Trump.

A handful of examples from across the state might give Iowa Democrats the answer they are looking for.

One such district is state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, D-Waukee, who won by 29 votes in a county Trump won by nearly 3,000 votes.

Another example is Senator-elect Matt Blake, who unseated incumbent State Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, negating Iowa Senate Democrats’ losses to only one seat after Sens. Nate Boulton, D-Des Moines, and Eric Giddens, D-Cedar Falls, lost their seats. Boulton and Giddens lost by 44 and 386 votes, respectively, to their Republican challengers.

“No Off Years”

Wahls said Democratic Party leaders should take a hard look at Johnson County Democrats’ organizing apparatus as an example of success in this election.

Johnson County had the widest margin of votes for Harris in the state with almost 70 percent of the county’s votes going to the vice president, giving her a nearly 40 percentage point lead over Trump in the county.

The county also had the widest margins for the Democratic candidate for Congress Christina Bohannan, who challenged incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and only lost by roughly 800 votes. The county gave over 70 percent of its vote to Bohannan, giving her a large boost to narrowly fail to oust Miller-Meeks.

Johnson County Democrats first chair and chair of the county party’s “get-out-the-vote” committee Dan Feltes said the county’s “No Off Years” campaign helped mitigate some of the Democrats’ losses at the presidential and congressional levels.

RELATED: Voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy ushered Trump’s win, Republican swing nationwide

Bohannan boasted the second-largest margin for a federal candidate in the county’s history, only surpassed by President Joe Biden’s margin in 2020.

The “No Off Years” campaign focuses on meeting voters where they are, even if it’s not an election year. This involves local canvassing efforts where canvassers go door-to-door and listen to Iowans’ concerns, and the county party holds roundtables and listening posts to hear from voters.

Feltes said this shows voters they care, even if it is not an election year, about their voices.

“People are pretty tired of politics, but people, when you engage them not during an election season, but in the so-called off year, they respect and appreciate it because they know that it’s about listening to them and engaging with them and lifting up their voice,” Feltes said.

Throughout the county party’s “get-out-the-vote” campaign, they knocked on over 58,000 doors, according to internal data shared with The Daily Iowan.

Feltes said going door-to-door is important, especially when people feel like the government isn’t working for them. Feltes said listening to voters is key for the path forward for Democrats.

Iowa Democrats still have to wrestle with a new reality; how will they compete in an increasingly red state?

Competing in a red state? 

With Trump’s rise to the political scene, Iowa has turned ruby red. Once a place where Democrats could compete and where Barack Obama won the state twice, Iowa now has a bleak outlook for Democrats.

Halliez said Democrats need to look at the shifting demographics and behaviors of the voter groups they are trying to garner support from. He said Democrats rely on urban voters and university students in Iowa but have real opportunities to gain in the suburbs of metro areas like Des Moines. Trone Garriott is an example of that.

“There is something that, on an ideological level, is not resonating in the Democratic message in states like Iowa,” Halliez said. “So, there’s room, perhaps, to reconquer a little bit with the suburbs with messaging.”

Hoffman said Democrats can’t spend too much time licking their wounds from their defeat in November and instead need to spend energy on looking at races they can learn from and to apply those lessons broadly.

“[Democrats] have to really start analyzing and thinking about the leadership, the decisions about where they organize, the messaging that they do, the engagement that they do, the fundraising that they do,” Hoffman said. “That’s a lot of hard work.”

In her letter to the State Central Committee Iowa Democrats, Chair Rita Hart said Democrats have to get to work to become competitive in the state again.

“This may be the hardest work and the toughest task we have ever tried to accomplish,” Hart wrote. “Remember that nothing worthwhile comes about without hard work. Let’s not throw up our hands.  Let’s roll up our sleeves and go back to work.”