Eastern Iowa is home to industrial riverfront cities, small towns surrounded by verdant farmland and a consequential number of voters who were inspired to vote for both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. And unlike many of the president’s Republican supporters, who could never imagine voting for a Democrat, many of […] Read more »
Brace for a Voter-Turnout Tsunami
Signs are growing that voter turnout in 2020 could reach the highest levels in decades—if not the highest in the past century—with a surge of new voters potentially producing the most diverse electorate in American history. But paradoxically, that surge may not dislodge the central role of the predominantly white […] Read more »
How the Ongoing Trade Fights Complicate the Political Map in 2020
As the nation’s trade fights linger on — and the 2020 presidential campaign moves onto the runway — there are three sets of counties to keep an eye on in the American Communities Project: the ag-based Aging Farmlands, small-town Rural Middle America, and the blue-collar Middle Suburbs. The tariffs and […] Read more »
Trump scrambles to reverse Rust Belt slide
Donald Trump’s aides and allies are moving aggressively to shore up his support in three Rust Belt states that propelled him to the presidency — but where his own polling shows him in trouble heading into 2020. … The Trump campaign recently completed a 17-state polling project that concluded the […] Read more »
Trump’s ‘great patriot’ farmers follow him into a trade war
Iowa farmer Tim Bardole survived years of low crop prices and rising costs by cutting back on fertilizer and herbicides and fixing broken-down equipment rather than buying new. When President Donald Trump’s trade war with China made a miserable situation worse, Bardole used up any equity his operation had and […] Read more »
If Trump Country Soars, Will the President Glide to a Second Term?
In small but politically significant ways, the economy under President Trump has favored regions and constituencies that supported him in 2016. These are the men and women whom Trump called forgotten Americans. The emerging pattern of economic growth reverses a trend that held from the 2008 recession to 2016, in […] Read more »