Obama’s Iowa Win Holds Despite Defections in 17 Counties; How Did Johnson County Vote?

By LYLE MULLER and HAYLEY BRUCE
IowaWatch Staff Writers

Read the original story at IowaWatch.org

In the end, counties with large Democratic bases overcame smaller Republican counties to help Barack Obama win Iowa’s six 2012 electoral votes for president.

Obama was successful in Iowa even though 17 counties that voted for him in 2008 went for GOP challenger Mitt Romney this time around, an IowaWatch analysis of the informal vote totals reported Tuesday showed.

Johnson County stayed in Obama's camp, though with a slightly smaller margin than four years ago. In 2008, 69 percent voted for Obama, while this year 67 percent did. See an interactive map with each county's totals at the Iowa Watch website.

Only one Iowa county – Woodbury – flipped from supporting the GOP candidate, John McCain, four years ago to favoring Obama, analysis showed.

The switches at the county level were in contrast to Obama’s overall win at the state level. While the president’s share of the vote was down in even stronghold Democratic counties he was able to collect enough in order to prevail.

Iowa County is one example of what happened to Obama. He took the county four years ago with 49.2 percent of the vote but Romney won the county this year with 51.6 percent. Delaware County favored Obama with 52.2 percent of the vote in 2008 but Romney was able to take the county narrowly with only 49.5 percent this year.

Megan Stiles, communications director for the state Republican Party, said party leaders believe they’ve made strides since 2008. Party registrations are up and Republicans took the governor’s office two years ago.

“We’ve come a long way,” Stiles said Tuesday night. “We’re still pretty focused on the state elections.”

Romney held serve for Republicans in Washington County, which narrowly supported John McCain in his Republican bid against Obama in 2008 by a slim 49.4 percent to 48.6 percent margin. Romney won 49.8 percent in the county to Obama’s 47.1 percent, unofficial results show.

“The fact is that he (Mitt Romney) is a businessman, and I think he would bring a great opportunity to the American citizens that Obama has not done in the last four years,” Rabecca Asher, 31, of Kalona said. “Normally I would vote Democratic. But in the last two elections I didn’t believe in Obama, and I can’t vote for someone I don’t believe in, so I’ve gone the other way.”

Other voters said they stuck to party lines because their party consistently lines up with their values.

“I just think they have a little more to bring to the table than the Democrats do, and that’s all as far as the way I believe and the way I see that the country should be run,” Wayne Bontrager, 58, who works construction in Kalona, said after voting Tuesday.

Some counties were not going to switch sides because of their historical ties to one of the political parties. Johnson County’s 70 percent support of Obama in 2008 may have slipped to 67 percent this year but that still provided a large margin over the 31 percent Romney received this year.

This project was produced by Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch.org, a non-profit, online news Website dedicated to collaborating with Iowa news organizations to produce explanatory and investigative work.