Democratic hopes are growing about a series of Senate races in deep-red states that have become far more competitive over the last few months.
But the party is nervous about Iowa.
The state, a Senate battleground that President Trump won by 13 percentage points in 2024, was always expected to have a close race. But even as the polling picture has grown deeply worrisome for Republicans in other states, the Iowa contest remains a dead heat. On a sprawling Senate map full of uncertainty, the state’s race could be the most unpredictable.
The Democratic nominee, Josh Turek, a moderate state representative and former Paralympian, has the political winds at his back but has faced a long list of challenges.
He is contending with not just the drag of a battered national Democratic brand in a state that Republicans have dominated since 2016. He is also facing a Republican, Representative Ashley Hinson, who entered the race with more name recognition, more campaign cash and, strategists in both parties privately say, more obvious political talent than some of her party’s other top Senate nominees.
“We were afraid of Hinson,” said Derek Eadon, a Democratic strategist in Iowa, adding that it was a feat that Mr. Turek has remained so close to her in the polls. “I do feel like Josh could pull it off, but it’s going to be close.”
Ms. Hinson, at the same time, has been forced to row against a rising tide of dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump and Republicans in Iowa. Mr. Turek has sought to remind voters of the unpopular Iran war, high gas prices, Medicaid cuts and high costs from tariffs as he travels to rural hospitals, farms and businesses.
“I hear Iowans tell me, ‘Josh, I’m struggling to keep food on the table, a roof over my head, pay my electric bill,” Mr. Turek said at a town hall in Sioux City, Iowa, last week. “And now with this war in Iran, I’m struggling just to keep gas in my tank.’”
“It’s not the America that we were promised,” he added.
Democrats have spent millions of dollars more on advertising in Iowa in October than Republicans have, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, in a sign of their concern about the race. Republicans are pushing hard for Ms. Hinson, too: Mr. Trump is set to rally on Sunday for a second time in Iowa to try to lift turnout for the party’s nominees in the state.
One factor working in Mr. Turek’s favor is the presence of another Democrat at the top of the ticket, Rob Sand, who has established a clear lead in polls over his Republican opponent for governor. Mr. Sand, a second-term state auditor who has branded himself as a centrist, has benefited from strong name recognition and approval of his job performance. In contrast, Mr. Turek’s relative obscurity before last year has made him more vulnerable to attacks from Republicans, strategists say.
Split-ticket voters could play a role: In a New York Times/Siena survey late last month, Mr. Sand ran 12 percentage points ahead of Mr. Turek, indicating that a significant slice of voters could vote for him and Ms. Hinson instead of backing both top Democrats.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, said she expected Mr. Sand to win the governorship but described the Senate contest as a tossup.
A Turek win “could easily happen, but Iowa’s gotten really Republican,” she said.
An Uphill Battle for a Democrat
During his energetic campaign for Senate, Mr. Turek has transformed from a low-profile state representative from Council Bluffs to a household name in Iowa.
High-dollar Democratic ads have emphasized his inspiring life story, which some Republicans privately acknowledge makes him more difficult to assail. Mr. Turek, who uses a wheelchair, became a two-time Paralympic gold medalist in basketball. Later, he flipped his red-leaning state House district by six votes in 2022.
As he travels from breweries to sports games to corn festivals, targeting red-leaning areas, Iowans often stop him to ask for his autograph.
Yet he is contending with the unpopularity of the Democratic Party, which 53 percent of voters in Iowa view as too far to the left, according to the Times/Siena poll. That is a bigger problem for Mr. Turek than it is for Mr. Sand because voters tend to revert to partisanship more in federal races than in state ones.
Mr. Turek has labored to differentiate himself, emphasizing his votes with Republicans in the Iowa Legislature and bucking Democratic stances on border security and social issues. There are signs his efforts are helping him: The same Times/Siena poll found that only 30 percent of Iowans viewed Mr. Turek as too far left.
Iowa Democrats “are doing well despite national Democrats, as opposed to because of national Democrats,” Mr. Eadon said.
The vast sums of money involved in Senate races also make them particularly challenging to win for a relative newcomer. Coming from the State House, Mr. Turek had to devote significant time to introducing himself to Iowa’s voters and a long list of national donors simultaneously. Ms. Hinson, in contrast, had experience raising the millions of dollars needed to win a congressional contest, and her allies set up a super PAC on her behalf soon after the primary.
The Iowa Senate contest has driven $260 million in advertising spending so far, according to AdImpact.
Strategists on both sides of the aisle say Mr. Turek would not have been able to compete without money from national Democratic groups — but that money has opened him up to attacks from Republicans.
Ms. Hinson regularly jabs Mr. Turek for his support from super PACs aligned with Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, whose national approval rating is even lower than Mr. Trump’s.
Mr. Schumer “will stop at nothing to drag him across the finish line,” Ms. Hinson said of Mr. Turek at a Trump rally this month. “So we have to stop him.” National Republican super PACs have also spent heavily for Ms. Hinson, but that support carries less of a negative connotation in a red state, Ms. Lake said.
Asked for comment on this article, Hannah Goss, a spokeswoman for Ms. Turek, pointed to Ms. Hinson’s personal wealth and allied super PAC, as well as her votes on Mr. Trump’s policies in Congress. She added that Ms. Hinson “will lose on Tuesday.”
John L. Brown, 71, a retired lawyer who identifies as a Republican, said he was voting Democratic for the first time in his life this year because Republicans “have been listening to Donald Trump and not the people in Iowa.”
Nick Hall, 29, a police officer and three-time Trump voter, sees Mr. Turek and Mr. Sand as welcome alternatives to the hyperpartisanship he feels is rampant in Washington.
Voting for moderate Democrats “might set the example of, ‘Republicans can work with Democrats,’” Mr. Hall said, “And get back to working together, not hating each other.”
Defensive Crouches
Both candidates, it can seem, are running as if they are behind.
A week ago, Mr. Turek released an ad responding to Ms. Hinson’s attacks over his past votes on gender issues, saying he opposed “males competing in female sports” and emphasizing that doing so was already illegal in Iowa.
Republicans have also continued to take a cautious tack, with Ms. Hinson straining to cast herself as independent from Mr. Trump even as he rallies for her. After Mr. Turek criticized her for initially voting against a procedural measure that could have paved the way for an early release of the Epstein files, she defended herself in an ad this month.
“Of course I voted to release the Epstein files,” Ms. Hinson says in the ad, referring to her vote from November 2025.
Republicans have continued to spend aggressively, with the Republican National Committee making its first-ever ad reservation in a Senate race in Iowa in mid-October.
Lauren French, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC, a Schumer-aligned Democratic super PAC, said that Iowa “remains an incredibly tight race.”
The group, she added, is “committed to seeing this race through to the finish line.”
Ann Klein contributed reporting from Johnston, Iowa.
