A year into Trump’s second term, Iowa voters offer clues for the midterm elections

By John King, CNN

Kellerton, Iowa (CNN) — Shanen Ebersole is smiling, keeping an eye on her cows as they graze. Calving season is soon, so election season will have to wait.

“We’ll walk them the mile and a half home in a month or so,” Ebersole tells a visitor. “Then they will calve in a pasture just like this. So, these are all our old mama girls.”

As we walk, the cows give an occasional gaze but mostly go about their business — calmly, with occasional bursts of playfulness.

“I wish Washington could get along like cows,” Ebersole said. “They need to find a way to get along for us, because that’s what we the taxpayers pay them to do.”

Ebersole was a Nikki Haley supporter when we first met early in the 2024 election cycle. She voted for Donald Trump in the end, believing his policies were better for her family farm. Now, though, there are signs of Trump exhaustion as she begins to think about 2026 races.

“We have choices,” Ebersole said. “We can say calm down. We can say talk nice.”

Trump has been back in the White House for a year now, and his standing — more than anything else — will define the mood and the direction of the midterm campaign. Ebersole scores his performance at a 3 out of 5. The economy feels a little better to her, and illegal border crossings are down.

But she recoiled at Trump’s plan to increase low-tariff beef imports from Argentina, finding it to be anything but “America First.” Now, the president’s talk of somehow taking control of Greenland feels like another detour from his campaign agenda.

“I don’t agree with that in any way, shape or form,” Ebersole said. “We need to take care of the 50 states that we have.”

The Ebersole Cattle Farm is in Kellerton, a rural Iowa town close to the Missouri border. Ringgold County is ruby-red when you look at election results here the past few decades; it’s a place Republicans count on especially in big years like this. Iowa will pick a new governor in 2026, plus a new US senator.

And Kellerton sits in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, a Democratic target as the party tries to capture the House majority in this year’s midterm elections.

Ebersole has a dim view of Washington. She favors term limits and says that in her view, members of Congress are obsessed with fundraising and power and forget family farmers like her; forget trying to find compromise on issues such as health care.

She includes her own representative, two-term GOP Rep. Zach Nunn, in that critique.

“We want change,” she said. “We need more freshness.”

Ebersole, of course, is just one voter. But her sentiment is potentially instructive. Democrats would have to flip just a few seats to take the House majority, but they would need gains in red states such as Iowa to build a bit of a cushion. To get there would likely require winning over a fair amount of reluctant Trump 2024 voters who see divided government as a way to check the Trump traits they don’t like.

“I think you have to vote for the person who best meets your goals,” Ebersole said. “Every time we are met with a new election cycle, I am open-minded.”

Recent history here favors the GOP.

Trump carried Iowa in all three of his White House runs, with a bigger margin each time. The last Democratic governor finished his term in January 2011. The last Democratic US senator left office in January 2015. All four House seats are now held by Republicans, but at least two are potentially competitive.

The 2024 GOP margin in the 3rd Congressional Districts was just shy of 16,000 votes; in the 1st Congressional District, the Republican incumbent won by just 799 votes.

A Trump convert says, ‘I got what I voted for’

Betsy Sarcone lives 70 miles north of the Ebersole farm, in the fast-growing Des Moines suburbs. This is our sixth visit, dating to August 2023 when we began our “All Over the Map” project to track campaigns and big policy debates through the eyes and experiences of everyday voters.

“I’m happy” is Sarcone’s take on Trump’s first year back in power. “I got what I voted for. And I think Trump has proved himself. There’s that saying, ‘Trump is always right. Trump was right about everything.’ That’s kind of how I am feeling right now.”

That is a dramatic change.

Sarcone was an early Ron DeSantis supporter in 2024, then switched to Haley. Back then, she said she would vote for Joe Biden if Trump won the GOP nomination.

“I just can’t put my rubber stamp on Trump having more influence over this country,” Sarcone told us in August 2023. “I view Trump as not having any personal responsibility.”

What changed?

“I think Biden probably changed me more than Trump,” Sarcone said. “Watching nothing be done, for four years, about an open border.”

Now, she gives Trump an A-minus for his first year. She says the economy is beginning to pick up, and she can look past some of the tone and character issues she raised about Trump when we first met.

“We’re at the point where I think 77 million of us don’t care about the rhetoric anymore,” Sarcone said. “We are about getting things done.”

A suburban revolt against Trump was a giant piece of the 2018 Democratic midterm gains. The Des Moines suburbs are a big part of the 3rd Congressional District, and Democrats are hoping for a repeat revolt this November.

But Republicans don’t have to worry about Sarcone. She has met Rep. Nunn and gives him high marks, and she is grateful to Iowa state Republicans for passing a school-choice program that helps her send her son and two daughters to private schools.

One other big change: Back when we first met, Sarcone laughed off Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

But during our latest visit, she said, “I’m starting to question the election of 2020.”

I interject: “He lost the election in 2020.”

Sarcone: “I don’t know.”

‘Sometimes it gets ugly,’ but securing the border is worth it

Waterloo is 140 miles from West Des Moines — first north, then east to make the journey. Chris Mudd is the CEO of Midwest Solar and a Trump guy from the beginning.

On the drive out to show us a new big solar installation, Mudd, too, brings up 2020 and adds a new twist. Sarcone is new to the 2020 election Trump echo chamber; Mudd has been there from the outset.

“This election fraud, I think that information is going to come out on that,” Mudd offers on the drive from Midwest Solar’s office in Waterloo to a Ford dealership in Shell Rock that is adding solar panels to its sprawling roof.

“Maybe Maduro is going to be able to offer some information about some of the things that happened in 2020. Like I told you long ago, I believe that election was stolen from him.”

To hear the 2020 conspiracy raised by two very different Trump voters was a reminder they spend their free time in the MAGA media echo chamber, where the idea that Venezuela was somehow involved with “rigging” the 2020 election has gained some traction.

Trump has been talking more about 2020 of late, and members of the QAnon conspiracy movement added Nicolás Maduro to the mix after the Venezuelan leader was taken into custody during a US military operation.

Mudd’s support of Trump is unflinching, even though he always raises objections about certain decisions or rhetoric. Watching aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics during deportation roundups, for example, makes him cringe. But he blames years of government turning a blind eye to immigration abuses, not Trump or ICE.

“When you make the sausage, sometimes it gets ugly,” Mudd said. “We have to secure the borders, and they are secure now.”

Mudd’s business took a hit when Trump canceled green-energy initiatives from the Biden administration. But high electricity prices are helping sell solar now.

“My life is similar,” is his take at the one-year mark. “But my optimism is greater because I believe the things that Trump is doing are good for the country.”

Overall, his gut and his work across the state tell him Trump’s “support maybe has waned a little bit” in Iowa.

“There are some people who read the headlines and they have a hard time defending it,” Mudd said. “I don’t. I believe negative things happen regardless of who is in power.”

He worries even his congressional district — the 2nd — could be competitive because the popular Republican incumbent is running for Senate. Mudd knows Trump voters who don’t care as much about voting when Trump is not on the ballot. He is not one of them.

“We need to win November,” he said. “Because I think they are going to try to impeach him. It’s going to cause havoc for the country.”

Asked whether he would consider supporting a Democrat for governor or some other state office, Mudd initially sounded open to it.

“I am a Republican but not a blanket Republican,” he said. But his own words give him pause. “Actually, I am a blanket Republican. I probably will vote a full red ticket.”

Want to sway voters? ‘Go down a gravel road’

Names often tell you a lot about a town, and Columbus Junction fits that bill. It is in rural Louisa County, in southeast Iowa. The town sprouted where a north-south railway intersected with an east-west railway.

Trump carried Louisa County with 70% of the vote in 2024, math not lost on local Democrats. Yet spirits were high at a recent potluck dinner held by county Democrats to begin their midterm planning.

The county is the 1st Congressional District, the most competitive of Iowa’s four.

For now, making sure Democratic candidates have enough signatures to get on the ballot is the priority. But the new county Democratic chairwoman, Michele Pegg, said voter registration drives and door-to-door canvassing are on the horizon.

Here, that often means knocking on a door with a Trump flag or sticker. Pegg said she looks forward to it.

“Nobody’s evil,” Pegg said. “The problem is we’ve been swayed to believe the other side is. … These are little bitty towns. When you’re talking populations of under 400, these are your neighbors, these are my neighbors. These are people that have good times and bad times, and we’re all in it together.”

Pegg promised to do her part organizing, and she believes there is opportunity because of some disappointment in Trump.

“I really do think he’s down a bit,” Pegg said. “I think people are frustrated with the sense that he ran on a lot of ‘America First’ stuff. ‘Hey, we’re going to take care of our people first’ — but we still have problems with water. We still have problems with soil, we still have problems with schools, we still have problems with funding schools and education.”

But Pegg pulled no punches. She said the Democratic brand is damaged in rural areas and the party’s candidates had better put in the work to repair it.

“I think that unfortunately there’s been a history of Democrats focusing on power places like Des Moines or Johnson County or some of the more university or non-rural areas,” Pegg said. “You know, people don’t even know where we’re at.”

Pegg knows the back roads here. She can’t close the sale on her own. But she is happy to offer Democratic candidates directions and advice.

“You want the office? You need to sway the voters,” she said. “Go down to a rural county. Go down a highway. Go down a gravel road. Go down a Class B road. Knock on a door.”

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