Democrats flip Trump +11 seat in Iowa special election

Is affordability the Democratic Party's secret weapon in 2026?

One of the things I promise paying members of this newsletter is day-after updates on key election outcomes. Although it is an off-year, there have been plenty of special elections to write about, all of them suggesting a pretty sizable leftward shift in the electoral environment since November 2024.

On average in 2025, Democratic candidates in special elections are running about 16 percentage points ahead of Kamala Harris’s margin versus Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election. That is 5-6 points higher than the average Democratic overperformance in 2017. Here’s my interview with Paul Krugman and The Downballot’s David Nir about these specials in June.

This shift (firmly in the territory of a “blue wave”) was repeated on Tuesday, August 26, with a Democratic victory in Iowa’s 1st Senate District — a seat Trump won by 11 points in 2024, according to The Downballot’s special election big board. Here’s their coverage of the race. Democratic candidate Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch by a margin of 10 percentage points, flipping the seat to the Democratic column and breaking the supermajority that Iowa Republicans had in their state legislature.

And Drey did it on an agenda of affordability. Here’s my short take on this race and what it means for 2026-28, for paying members of Strength In Numbers.

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