How Dubuque County Went Republican For The 1st Time Since Eisenhower

The election of 2016 provided many surprising results to longtime Iowa politics watchers, but one county shaded in red stood out most of all: Dubuque. The working class Catholic river town of Northeast Iowa was won by the Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 1956, when it was Dwight Eisenhower on the ballot. With just under 100,000 residents, Dubuque is Iowa’s seventh-largest county, and often gives the Democrats healthy victory margins (about a 10,000 vote margin in 2008, 7,000 in 2012).

Not in 2016, though.

Barack Obama took Dubuque County with a 15-point victory in 2012, winning there 56.5% to Mitt Romney’s 41.8%. Trump carried it with 47.2% of the vote to Clinton’s 46%. Trump racked up 2,180 more votes than Romney did, while Clinton received 5,918 fewer votes than Obama. Overall turnout was down 1,173 votes, or about 2%. Third party candidates saw their share of the vote rise by a decent amount.

But those countywide numbers only tell part of the story. Where specifically did the vote swings occur, and what could that tell us about where the Democratic Party needs to improve on in the future?

(As always, you can download my full spreadsheet here to play with the numbers yourself.)

The Iowa Secretary of State’s office released the official canvass last month, which allows us to now take a close, detailed look at precinct-by-precinct results, and compare them to 2012. Much of what you find in the Dubuque County precinct results confirms the national trends: rural areas backed Republicans in overwhelming numbers, many blue collar Democrats switched to Trump and turnout was down in reliably Democratic areas.

However, the magnitude of the raw vote shifts in Dubuque County is astonishing. Clinton lost more than one out of every four votes that Obama got in Dubuque’s downtown precincts, an area that is historically one of the strongest in the entire state for Democrats. A precipitous drop in turnout in precincts with younger voters cost Clinton hundreds of votes. And one rural precinct saw a 45-point swing toward Trump over Republicans’ 2012 performance.

Clinton did not improve in raw votes over 2012 in a single precinct. There were simply precincts where she did less bad than others, and a few where her percentage advantage over Trump was slightly better than 2012, but only because of overall depressed turnout. But even those areas where Clinton didn’t underperform too much still shows hopeful signs for Democrats moving forward.

We’ll go through each region of Dubuque County and parse the precinct results to see what trends are apparent, but let’s first take a look at some countywide maps. Grant Gregory, a former Iowan and recent graduate living in D.C., was nice enough to help Starting Line with some mapping of the data.

First, here’s how the county played out between the Democrats and Republicans:

As is the case in many Midwestern counties, Republicans rack up big wins in the rural areas as Democrats’ margins improve the closer you get to downtown. Obama won several of those rural precincts in 2012, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The most important metric we’ll look at is how much Trump’s margins improved over 2012. For example, if Obama won a precinct 60% to 35% in 2012, but Clinton only won it 50% to 45% in 2018, that’s a 20-point margin improvement for Republicans (from +25 Democrat to +5 Democrat). Even if Trump lost some of the downtown precincts, he lost it by a much smaller margin than Romney did four years ago:

As you can see, the most Democratic area of Dubuque is also where Trump saw some of his best improvements. We’ll take a closer look at that in a moment, but first here’s a map of how turnout changed in 2016:

City of Dubuque

The most fascinating shifts in party allegiance and overall turnout happened around downtown Dubuque. For the purposes of this story, I’m going to divide the city into four different sections: The Flats, College/Hills, Western Edge, and the North and South Periphery. Locals are free to quibble with me about whether this represents an accurate division of the city’s neighborhoods and demographics, but I think it serves a useful way to analyze the data.

Take a look at the below map to get a sense of the city’s layout. You can zoom in a bit and see other maps at the Secretary of State’s page for Dubuque precincts. For reference, here’s which precincts I’m putting in which section:

The Flats: 13, 14, 15, 16
College/Hills: 8, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 19
Western Edge: 3, 4, 5, 6, Asbury East, Asbury West/Center North
North and South Periphery: 1, 2, 12, 20

Downtown Dubuque/”The Flats”

Let’s start with the most interesting section of town. The locals call downtown and the neighborhoods surrounding it “The Flats,” situated between the Mississippi River and the bluffs. Row houses are packed close together on the long, straight streets here.

While Precincts 14, 15 and 16 are where most of Dubuque’s African American population lives, it’s still a mostly white, blue collar area. Many of the locals have been living here for 30 years or more. The former Dubuque meat packing facility, locally known as “The Pack,” employed thousands of people until it shut down in 2001. There’s still some factories around, including the John Deere facility, that employs much of this section of town. But the loss of many large manufacturing companies has led this area to also become known as the “Abandoned Warehouse District.” German Catholics are concentrated on the north side of The Flats, Irish Catholics are more common on the south end.

This used to be a place where Democrats could rack up impressive vote margins. Clinton still won all four precincts here, but the shift from 2012 is dramatic. I’m going to list all the data in each of these sections, but just scroll down if you want the summary (I’m using the polling place name as well since that’s how the locals know each part of town).

The biggest margin differential in the city occurred in Precinct 13. Obama won 13 by a 70% – 29% margin in 2012. Clinton only bested Trump by a 51% – 43% margin. That’s a net swing of 34%. When a Democrat can’t rack up massive margins in a blue county’s best precincts, there’s just no hope for a countywide win.

The other significant number here is turnout. In Precincts 15 and 16, the more working class neighborhoods of The Flats, turnout stayed right around 2012 numbers. So Clinton’s problem wasn’t that Democrats stayed home, it’s that voters flipped to the Republican Party or to independent candidates. Clinton received 235 fewer votes than Obama did in Precinct 15, even though turnout only dipped by 16 votes.

However, in Precincts 13 and 14, the area of The Flats with some lower income areas, the problem was both vote switchers and low turnout. 188 fewer people voted in Precinct 13, contributing to Clinton getting a whopping 336 fewer votes than Obama in 2012.

The north end of The Flats – where more German Catholics live – gave Trump the biggest improvement, while the south end – where you have more Irish Catholics – was still bad, but not as much so. Although that might be a coincidence from other factors.

Third parties also made a big impact here, with non-Clinton/Trump candidates getting 8% of the vote in Precinct 14 and 7.3% in Precinct 15.

Overall, Clinton lost over one out of four voters in The Flats that went for Obama in 2012. A mix of frustrated blue collar voters and depressed turnout from African Americans combined to undercut the base of the party’s support that made Dubuque so Democratic for so long.

College/Hills

Moving into the midsection of the city, let’s take a look at the neighborhoods around Dubuque’s many colleges (Loras College, Clarke University, University of Dubuque and Emmaus Bible College), as well as the mix of middle class neighborhoods and apartment buildings in the city’s hills. This seven-precinct part of town isn’t completely homogenous, but the differences between certain areas are interesting.

Many of Dubuque’s younger residents live in this area of town, either as college students, recent graduates or young families in their 20’s and 30’s. Here’s the data:

As in The Flats, Clinton won all the precincts in the midtown area, but far underperformed Obama’s totals in 2012. The two precincts closest to downtown, 11 and 17, more resemble what we saw there, with Trump improving on Romney’s numbers by 8 points and Clinton dropping significantly, for a total net shift of 23% and 25%.

However, the most interesting results are in Precincts 9, 18 and 19, where the net swing to Republicans was only 2.9%, 10.6% and 3.1%. These are the precincts with lots of young voters, including many of the Loras College students who live in Precinct 9. Trump actually lost a significant amount of votes compared to Romney here, receiving 135 less in Precinct 9. Clinton just lost more, and the third party candidates saw some of their biggest totals here. Stein, Johnson and others combined for 9.9% of the vote in 9, 10.1% in 18 and 8.5% in 19.

The difference between these precincts and The Flats seems to be that older Democrats flipped to Trump, while younger Democrats appeared more likely to move to Johnson, or just didn’t vote.

The other big number here is that turnout was down in these young voter areas, way down. Especially around Loras College, voters simply didn’t turn out. 254 fewer voters showed up in Precinct 9, 226 fewer in Precinct 10. Again, take a look at the turnout map – the biggest drop off is all concentrated in the middle of the city:

These precincts are bad news for all parties. For Democrats, their former reliable voting bloc of young people during Obama’s campaigns are not turning out or going third party. For Republicans, young voters clearly want absolutely nothing to do with Trump, which is a major missed opportunity given their distaste for Clinton. For third party candidates, they’re doing best in places where turnout drops the most, which shows they appeal well to those disillusioned with politics… but not enough to actually get those people out to vote for them. And for Jill Stein supporters, her poor performance in comparison to Gary Johnson (Stein got only 379 total votes in Dubuque County, Johnson got 2,013) seems to undercut the idea that what will drive young people to the polls is an extremely progressive, far left policy agenda. Instead they are either leaning Libertarian, or they are casting a protest vote for Johnson instead of a more ideological vote for Stein.

Western Edge

Okay, now how about some halfway good news for Democrats? Or at least as good as it’s going to get in Dubuque County. There seems to be some room for opportunity for the future in the highly-educated, middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods on the western edge of the city. These are the neighborhoods built after World War 2, that are still expanding outward and that have a mostly suburban feel to them. In the exurban Asbury area, one of the precincts literally votes at the country club.

Here Trump faced his biggest struggle, only slightly improving on Romney’s vote total, but often underperforming his percentage of the growing vote. Clinton lost votes here as well, but it wasn’t nearly as pronounced as elsewhere in the city.

Here’s the data for the six precincts on Dubuque’s western edge:

While Clinton didn’t improve on Obama’s raw vote numbers in a single precinct in Dubuque County, she came just 5 votes shy in the relatively well-off community of Asbury. Overall the net shift to Republicans in these precincts was kept relatively low, and that was mostly due to some third party defections, rather than a dramatic increase in votes for Trump.

This is also the first area we’re looking at where turnout increased in many places. When we get to the rural areas, we’ll see that was a terrible sign for Clinton, but here the better turnout was a mostly mixed bag for the two main contenders.

Still, this was one of the biggest disappointments for the Clinton campaign – they hoped to increase Democrats’ votes in these suburban areas, especially among independent and Republican-leaning women. That clearly didn’t happen for Clinton, as she failed to pick up votes here, but there still remained a clear discomfort among Republicans for Trump.

If the problem was simply Clinton as a candidate, then Democrats are poised to make real gains here in the future as long as Trump continues to damage the Republican brand among suburban voters. But as these numbers show, it won’t simply be enough to be anti-Trump to capitalize on this opportunity. You have to put up a somewhat acceptable alternative to get these voters to abandon Republicans.

North/South Periphery

Four precincts lay on the outer edge of the north and south end of the city, but don’t fit into a neat geographic or demographic area. They do, however, highlight again the economic divide driving the 2016 vote.

Precinct 12 is north of downtown, Precinct 1 is south – both have large trailer park complexes in them. Precinct 2 and 20 are just south of Highway 20 – both have higher-income neighborhoods. Precinct 20 contains the older, fancier houses of old Dubuque, while Precinct 2 has more new developments. Many of the city’s college professors live in Precinct 2, while many nuns live in Precinct 20.

Here’s how they turned out:

Clinton’s biggest drop-off came in the larger trailer park area of Precinct 12, falling 237 votes short of what Obama got. Again, she still won it overall, but by a much lower margin than Democrats did in 2012. Trump lost Romney votes in both of the more well-off precincts.

But Clinton didn’t do half bad in the nicer areas on the south side of Dubuque. She even slightly improved on the Obama/Romney margin in Precinct 2 – Obama won by 7.1 points, Clinton took it by 8.

Rural Dubuque County

That covers everything for the city of Dubuque, now let’s turn to the county. This was all Trump country, where he saw some of the most dramatic swings in support from 2012 and, most importantly, a large increase in voter turnout. Rural Dubuque County is overwhelmingly Catholic and very pro-life. A number of prominent Catholic churches are located in the small northern towns of Balltown and Luxemburg. Democrats can and have won out here, you just have to be a well-known Catholic Democrat to do so.

Here’s the county map:

And here’s the data (this time I’m using the precinct names instead of the polling places so it’s easier to tell which town/township is which):

Obama won an impressive 7 of 13 of these rural precincts in 2012. It seemed like they all woke up on Election Day in 2016 and realized, “Oh yeah, we’re Republicans now.” Clinton failed to win a single rural Dubuque precinct, and the net shifts in Republican support were vast.

It’s unlikely you’ll find many other precincts in the state – or country – that swung a full 46 points to Republicans, as Bernard, the small rural farming community in southern Dubuque County, did this year. Some of the other biggest shifts were in the northern small Catholic communities of New Vienna, Luxemburg, Holy Cross and Balltown. Dyersville, the hub of rural Dubuque on the county’s western border, surprisingly wasn’t quite as bad for Democrats.

Economic and cultural trends played a part here as well. Compare the net Republican shift in Peosta (13%) to Farley (37%). Farley is your more typical small town Iowa, with a tiny town center and large agricultural buildings nearby, while Peosta is a bedroom community for Dubuque, laid out in newer subdivisions.

The other important number here is turnout. While Dubuque County overall saw 1,173 fewer voters show up in 2016, the rural precincts improved over 2012 turnout by 197 votes. Republican voters were motivated to show up, and some places seemed to increase specifically thanks to new Trump voters. However, if you look back at the turnout map, you’ll notice the largest gains came in the areas right around the outer edge of Dubuque, where new developments are being built. So some of the biggest turnout jumps could be more attributable to simply more people living there than four years ago.

Trump boosted the raw vote total over Romney’s in a big way here. Countywide Trump got 2,180 more votes than Romney, 1,599 of which came from these 13 rural precincts alone. He racked up 243 extra votes in the Balltown area and 203 more in southeast corner of Dubuque County around Zwingle. Meanwhile, Clinton lost one out of every four votes that Obama received in rural Dubuque.

Lessons Moving Forward

So what does this all mean for both parties as they look to rebuild or solidify their advantage? For one, it’s helpful to put actual solid numbers to the general assumptions like blue collar voters abandoned Democrats and rural areas swung even harder for Republicans in order to start prioritizing your solutions.

The most daunting challenge for Democrats is that they essentially need to address everything: bringing home blue collar voters, boosting youth turnout and support, and winning back a decent margin of rural voters.

Countywide, Clinton got 5,918 fewer votes than Obama did in 2012. 859 of those were from the four precincts in The Flats, 1,590 were from the seven precincts of the College/Hills region where there’s more young voters, and 2,163 came from the 13 rural precincts. You can’t just address one of those areas and hope to win statewide or even in Dubuque County again. Nor can simply a strong field effort or solely a new, better message fix Democrats woes – they lost for multiple different kinds of reasons across Dubuque.

Winning deep blue precincts by 55% instead of 70% won’t rack up the totals needed to offset Republican wins elsewhere. And losing rural precincts in Eastern Iowa 60% to 35% gives the Republicans too much of a lead.

The one ray of good news is that Democrats may have new opportunities going forward in the growing suburban communities, which typically have strong turnout regardless of the year or type of election. Making real inroads there could yield major benefits, especially in state legislative districts. It might also be nice to finally have a base of support for the Democratic Party that isn’t extremely difficult to convince to go to the polls every two years.

And that’s the one concern that Republicans might take out of these numbers – the areas of the state where the population is growing seem uneasy with Trump, and new, younger voters first coming into the process appear to outright despise him. That didn’t matter so much in 2016 as youth turnout decreased, rural areas more than made up for any losses, and Clinton couldn’t capitalize in suburban areas. But a stronger Democratic top-of-ticket in future elections could exacerbate those looming problems for Republicans.

Still, those potential opportunities won’t be enough if Democrats don’t right the ship with their blue collar voters and with rural areas. The makeup of Dubuque County mirrors the statewide issues for Democrats – there simply isn’t enough of the suburban precincts that may look promising to make up for the population in areas trending Republican.

So as the Democrats plan their path back to victory, party leaders and activists should study the specific numbers of what went wrong in 2016 in order to craft a wide-ranging solution that addresses every weakness.

Thanks again to Grant for help with the maps. If you like his work, contact him at grantrgregory@gmail.com.

by Pat Rynard
Posted 1/3/16