[Note: This interview was made for listening. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.]
Mark Munger: This is a Manager's Special from Siouxland Public Media. I'm Mark Munger. This past Tuesday, voters dramatically changed the balance of power in both the federal and state governments. Later this hour, we'll talk with Iowa State Senator Catelin Drey, who has been re-elected to a seat she won in the 2025 special election. First, Bradley Best, professor of political science at Buena Vista University, Julia Hellwege, the Diane Jones Meier Distinguished Professor of Gender and Public Policy at the University of South Dakota, and Patrick McKinlay, professor of political science at Morningside University, joined me for an election wrap.
Julia Hellwege: Well, I'll start with one big question. Sort of adding on a question to your question that I think is on people's mind is whether this was solely a reaction to the incumbent government and really governments when we look at all the gubernatorial races as well, or whether this was a blue wave of people moving toward the Democratic Party instead, and I think that's a really interesting question that we can't really fully disentangle, and so probably a both and. But I do think it's really interesting to consider both of those things, right? Is it as per typical a midterm backlash swing, especially an economic downturn, or is this something bigger than that?
Bradley Best: I mean, I think it's hard not to suspect that that the repudiation, as I think it's fair to say, is occurring here, where the the current president is concerned, as well as Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate that that repudiation is both wide; it is of almost continental scale, and it is very very deep. We saw Democrats winning in lots and lots of down-ballot races, and Democrats winning races in areas of the country, in districts, in smaller settings states where they have not had much success before, and where they were not strong in 2024, and so it's all of that kind of contributes, I think, to this this this larger sense that the it's not merely a blue wave, but perhaps even a tidal wave, and so to Julia's point about whether this is how to read that. In other words, is this a is this gravitation on the part of a number of key constituencies in the direction of the Democratic Party, or is this a is this a broad-scale referendum on the Republicans? I'm probably going to err slightly on the side of the latter in my case.
Patrick McKinlay: Yeah, I think you're both raising really good points about this. I'm going to throw one wrinkle that that maybe can spur some further conversation down the road: is as we, I think, characterizing this as a as a national wave, a tsunami, whatever whatever characterization you want to give it, but as we look at these races, especially these down-ballot races, and some of the races where we really didn't necessarily expect to see competition, hello Mississippi, I think we also are going to end up. There's going to be lots of opportunity for future research for our colleagues in candidate selection, because I think we're going to see that the the candidates that the parties put up mattered and obviously there's there's already a lot of discussion about the majority, the previous majority party's selection of some candidates in some states for some major offices, and the way in which they chose to support them versus how, in this case, the Democrats kind of really reached down and found a pretty impressive group of candidates to run, even in unexpected places. I think the Mississippi race is going to be one of those that we we have to say, wow! If you if you run really good quality candidates, that's not saying anything negative about the Republican incumbent, but that can you be competitive, even in places where you might not otherwise expect yourself to be?
Bradley Best: Well, and the the governor's race in Iowa, I think, is a is a case in point, and probably the most visible case in point to us. Rob Sand was, in terms of the way in which we would appraise candidate quality. I mean, he was at the top of the scale and ran a very strategically wise campaign, and and did just exactly what what I think the Democrats did. They're just exactly what Patrick is suggesting,
Mark Munger: Right. And I think in Woodbury County, if I'm not mistaken, I think the the governor vote shifted about 30 points toward the Democrat from one governor race to the next. So that's more and... On the same ticket, you know, Chris McGowan won. So it wasn't that everybody came out and just totally rejected a single party. I think there was something in particular about that candidate. To your point, that so many people did come out for.
Patrick McKinlay: You know, we don't have the straight-ticket voting that we once had, and I don't think voters necessarily come into it with that expectation. Many, most come in with their party affiliation, and that is we still know that that's the largest predictor of of vote selection. But when you don't have that one button to pull, or you know, back in the day when it was a machine, that gets people to stop. And I think when you have and and the the gubernatorial race in Iowa was was interesting in a whole lot of ways, and and then you add to that we had a really competitive Senate race that that again we might not have expected to be as competitive, and then literally you know but it was an open seat so that that also and and how that distributed vote share, but I think we can think about this nationally too.
Julia Hellwege: Well, I think one of the important pieces here is we're thinking about both candidate selection and you know party strategy, is that Democrats really came out as much more cohesive nationally, and I think this is something that we've seen in South Dakota too. That Republicans are trying to become more cohesive, but Republicans truly have had a struggle lately between the establishment Republicans and the MAGA Republicans for the right wing, and again we see that in in South Dakota. We saw that in the primaries, and we're seeing this now with some of the shifts and the candidate selection, some of those convention issues that might have arisen, and I think that is really important to consider the candidate who can maybe be charismatic and run a great campaign and all those kinds of things. But political party in their ability to nominate someone who can bring the party together is also very important, and particularly right now. And I think that's something that Republicans will need to think about considerably over the next two years as they're looking toward next election.
Mark Munger: The AP's exit polling showed that one of the issues that came to the top was that that people wanted a balance in government, and I think what you're mentioning about Iowa having a good slate between the governor and the senator, that was an opportunity for people to say, "We can balance our government." South Dakota, I hate to point, necessarily, to you... but you know South Dakota. They don't have necessarily those slates that provide opportunity. So you mentioned that they they went against the trend in the national politics, and that their vote didn't increase in this election. The number of people who turned out. Do you think that might, in part, be because there isn't an option? I mean, really, the the way to protest the direction of something in a state like South Dakota, where it's really a single-party control without other alternative is just to stay home, not to go out and and vote for somebody else.
Julia Hellwege: Right. I think some of the lack of competition really drives a lack of efficacy among the voters, and that's true. I think for a variety of voters in South Dakota right now, Democrats and Independents each have about 25% of the vote, actually, but independents really holding that kind of moderate space, and so feeling that there's no strong or at least viable candidate for them as they have not been winning lately, so that decreases efficacy. But I think it's also very important to acknowledge in South Dakota, we have now had three elections for governor in the last like six months, right?
We had a hotly contested primary with four candidates, and then we had a runoff after that, and then now we have the general election, and so that also means that potentially some of those Republicans have now lost their, maybe their first choice, and then also their second choice, and now they're down to their third choice. And so again, that has the potential of losing that sense that like you matter to the election, and that your preferred candidates are not there. And again, that I, you know, don't want to miss that point again about the splinter between the establishment Republicans and the MAGA Republicans, as Toby Doeden was the front-runner in the initial primary election, and so I do think there's a sense among quite a few voters in South Dakota that they are just not efficacious, that they are not mattering to the election, and so I think that it's going to have an effect on on that turnout that is just very different from a lot of different a lot of the other areas of the country.
Patrick McKinlay: I'll just make a quick comment. Again, I I don't know that we have been able to suss out the the the bigger trends nationwide, but there's a lot of discussion about what is, what was the configuration of the Democratic coalition in in each of these races, and literally hundreds, if not 1000s, of races. But also, what is the status or the status of fragmentation of the the MAGA coalition? And one part of that is, and how many folks either chose not to to select on a particular ballot or or stayed home.
Overall, we see that that nationwide, I think we saw strong trends in terms of participation, but we don't know yet whether that was true across the parties and including independents, or if if there were certain groups that that you know just chose not to participate.
Mark Munger: And what what we're seeing or what's being reported now is that it appears that every demographic shifted.
Julia Hellwege: Republicans really lost white women and men of color, and all of those other groups. Everybody except for white men shifted further to Democrats.[1]
Patrick McKinlay: but they did move.
Julia Hellwege: They did move. Certainly, they did move. But they did not move over the you know the 50%.
Patrick McKinlay: Right,
Bradley Best: Which I think goes to the point of that that this was in many ways a referendum as well as a rejection of the overall direction of of public policy in the last two years, and certainly under the Trump presidency, Julia refers to two demographic groups that are going to experience that less favorable, that more troubled economy differently, and responded to it in the way that we're seeing. And so, I think the case, just as we're talking here, I think we can even see here that the case is getting stronger that this was, this was rather conscious and intentional.
One of the things that we we sometimes talk about in political science, too, is is whether seat loss at midterm election time for the Republican Party is an artifact of turnout, whether it's it's structural and and then pushing back against that is a bit more of the the claim that this is that this is actually quite purposeful that voters know what they're doing and I think this result points in that direction. So,
Mark Munger: Yeah, Patrick, I think it was you who mentioned earlier that you know one of the great predictors of a vote is your party affiliation, but in this case, if people are switching parties, do we have the same party affiliation we historically have as you know? As like people under 30 are are shifting. They they shifted dramatically from Republican vote to Democratic vote. Non-white, both men and women shifted from Republican ticket to Democratic ticket, even though they had identified as Republican.
Julia Hellwege: I think there are two parts here. One is that we do have a growing number of independents, and so we should not forget about that. A lot of these folks are either registering as independent or no party affiliation. The other part, I think, goes to a point that Patrick made earlier about the straight ticket, right? Because some of these folks are may have previously voted a full Republican ticket, but are now swapping things up within the ballot. And so I think some of those voters, and obviously we're definitely seeing them, are more likely to have a split-ticket vote than they are to have completely shifted over. Now we know anecdotally that there certainly are many people who have completely shifted over, but I think that it's a bit more nuanced and there's a bit more variability there.
Patrick McKinlay: Yeah, and and I I defer to my colleagues here about expertise. I have a feeling that we'll see more clarity about party affiliation in a presidential year rather than a midterm year. This is this again back to Brad's earlier point about kind of a repudiation or or a rejection of current administration policy. It's the thermostatic model, kind of saying, well, you go back and forth.
Mark Munger: Professors Patrick McKinlay, Julia Hellwege, and Bradley Best talking about the 2026 midterm election for a Manager's Special on Siouxland Public Media. I'm Mark Munger.
Patrick McKinlay: What we should talk about is that we're not talking about a small swing. This is 13 percent or 13 point differential is historically huge. We're talking 50-year high, since the Watergate midterm, shortly after President Nixon resigned. So yeah, that's that's a pretty that's a
Mark Munger: and the rhyme with we we
Patrick McKinlay: can say this is historic.
Mark Munger: Yeah, and the rhyme with that election is corruption, right? I mean, there was a sense of corruption then, and people were saying this time, sort of out of the blue, October suddenly corruption shows up on voter concerns.
Patrick McKinlay: I think corruption, but we should not underestimate. And this is a rhyme: is is the affordability theme. That Julia was talking about earlier, of a kind of a not fully coherent, because it wasn't like there was a Contract with America or something like that that Democrats ran on, but they did have an affordability kind of common theme, and and and we have this even though you know one might look at the broader American economy and say, "Well, we're we're growing." You know, unemployment is low, and so forth. You know, "You've never had it so good," someone once said so, but that's not how the voters certainly perceive it. And and there's a lot of a lot of reasons behind that. But that was also the case in in the 1970s. Remember the stagflation? That was a you know a very important part of that, and as well as corruption.
Mark Munger: Maybe we don't care about corruption until it's hard for us to live? You know, I mean, until our pocketbooks are really hit, till I'm paying $4 for gas, I'll let corruption go?
Bradley Best: What comes to mind is a conversation I had just yesterday with a with a colleague who's a an historian, American historian, and and and he asked. He said, you know, apart from apart from reactions to high gas prices, inflation, you know, war in Iran, that's that sort of thing. He says that he feels like there's something also a little deeper here. And this is a person with a pretty a pretty studied view of of of American politics in the certainly in the 20th century, and that that resonated with me in in part because of of one of my other kind of scholarly interests, and that is in the is in the in the in the work of Hannah Arendt, who wrote meaningfully and who contributed much to the the the discussion of the role of truth or untruth or falsity or, in fact, lying in in politics.
And I'm prepared as to to to connect to something that Patrick said. I'm prepared as we sort of suss out again the the what happened here sort of question and and and the information that we're able to gather. I think I'm prepared to to to to see evidence that there was something in fact deeper here, and that is that this all politics as theater thing that we get in such large daily doses from the president that the, I guess you might say the the abdication of any concern for the truthfulness of what is said in the in the White House and and and the the MAGA group's tolerance of that, if not if not ratification of these things, I'm ready to discover, I think, that that this was also somewhat of a referendum about that. There's an optimistic strain in me that says maybe maybe the American electorate has decided that this that again this theatrical thing that you're doing was entertaining for a while, but it's really hurting me at the gas pump. I'm having trouble paying my utility bills. I'm not sure how I'm going to meet my deductibles in terms of meeting healthcare costs, and we might have found the limit on the style that we've been encountering.
Patrick McKinlay: Well, and I think doing appearances at the reflecting pool and then going to the ballroom the day after probably also resonate with that in some respect, and not quite sure that the president's fellow party members were as appreciative of that when they were trying to bring home a concluding message about how they were going to try to meet the the needs of their constituents, but...
Mark Munger: Do you think that colored elections like Iowa's for governor and senator? Do you think...
Julia Hellwege: I think this is a really interesting question, right? Is that, if this is a referendum on the president and Congress on national politics, why then are we seeing so many gubernatorial shifts as well? And so I think that it's worth us considering how, you know all of this is connected. As this is a referendum, on the governing party, this is a referendum on the Republican Party, and sort of a check.
I think the truthfulness partly, but also you know we talked last year. I think a bit about democracy and satisfaction with democracy, and how Democrats really pushed on democratic values as an institution, even though Republicans are more satisfied with democracy because they've been in power.
And so I do think that there's something to be said for like, how can we understand gubernatorial shifts if it's not about state politics, and so, you know, all politics is local, but seemingly also all politics seems to be pretty national as well.
Mark Munger: Yes, that chasm between the two seems, like, I I have a really hard time bridging it in my mind. Like, what did happen? Why did it? And even down ticket in Iowa, the attorney general's race shifted as well, which is not something most people are thinking about in terms of Republican, Democrat, or even I think, maybe I sound cynical, but I don't think a lot of people think of that anyway.
Bradley Best: And so, therefore, that's why I think that whatever it is that whatever sentiments that were there that were driving, say, the generic balloting that we look at, then the attorney general's race here in Iowa is an artifact of whatever we're uncovering there, or whatever's being mentioned.
Patrick McKinlay: There is going to be a side debate, and this doesn't go nationwide, but it does. There, there's been lots of studies of the relative ineffectiveness of presidential barnstorm tours, and I'm trying to remember the details of both Woodbury County and and we could look at Pott County and we could look at Dubuque County, but in the places where the president appeared, we're pretty they they've shifted pretty far blue in in relative terms. And so you know what were were those late... and and those appearances of those candidates alongside the president? So they they linked pretty pretty closely.
You know, Zach Lahn was with the president and so forth. So so there was a and so was Ashley Hinson, and so that that that kind of bridging of the national and the local was was very explicit, at least in the Iowa race.
Mark Munger: I'm Mark Munger, filling in for Bret Hayworth, and you're listening to a Manager's Special on Siouxland Public Media. Today, an election wrap with professors Bradley Best of Buena Vista University, Julia Hellwege of the University of South Dakota, and Patrick McKinlay of Morningside University.
Nebraska didn't go in the way that a lot of people thought it might go. Osborn did not win, but he was close as an Independent. But I guess the vote did change there as well. So even if the the end result isn't, let's say, the color doesn't look blue on the map when it's represented, but there was there was a change, which you could also say for South Dakota.
Julia Hellwege: Right, I think they're actually relatively similar, and I think also similar in the sense of having that independent candidate, which I think kind of tells you the importance of party politics. Even if you have independents and you're putting independents on the ballot, people love to say that that's what they're looking for and that's what they want, and they're tired of the two parties. But at the end of the day, having that party signal really helps voters to know what they can expect from you. And I think we did certainly see independent winners in in many spaces. However, I still think that it it is more challenging for voters to read up and learn about independent candidates, and and that's come across, I think.
Mark Munger: Yeah. There's also the challenge that Osborn faced, where everybody said, "Well, you're just a Democrat in disguise."
Julia Hellwege: Yeah, and that was similar for how Bengs was treated in South Dakota as well. And you know, he ran as a Democrat previously, and then as an independent, and it was a three-way race for a while until Doeden had to step out for a variety of personal and challenging reasons, and so that left an Independent who was formerly a Democrat but who had also very much opposed a Democrat, and that made it ever the more complicated.
Mark Munger: Yes, yes, and then those ways it does feel very personal because, let's say I'm a voter who identifies as in one party and it feels like you've been rejected by that person or you know yeah it's it's it's hard to deal with.
Julia Hellwege: I think it was challenging for you know Democrats and whether you're in Nebraska or in South Dakota to reconcile those ideas. Like are they a Democrat or are they not a Democrat, or are they just opposed to Republicans? And what does that mean?
Mark Munger: Well, were there any other local races or things happening that that you were really watching, or that you feel illuminated the state of our country?
Patrick McKinlay: Well, I mean, one thing we should talk about is you know the pretty significant shift not only at the at the Senate level and at the gubernatorial level, but also at the House level. And granted, you know the the fourth stayed in Republican hands, even though it was an open seat. But you can look at pretty big wins in the other three districts in Iowa, and that's, I think, the characterization of Iowa as being just a red state is probably very much in question right now.
It's but but again, I think something that resonates with what Julia was just saying. I mean, we're already we're certainly seeing the beginning of a conversation about the future of the Republican Party going into '28, is it is it still a MAGA party? Has that become the the strictly the Republican brand, or is or is there are there other iterations of what the Republican message should be?
But we're also going to see that with the Democrats in terms of you know is it is moderates, self-described moderates, did very well. I think we'd probably describe the the three candidates in Iowa as as moderate winners, and and so but there's also the the progressive DSA kind of group within the Democratic Party that, again they're going to be be trying to certainly shape the the governing agenda within the legislature within Congress.
Bradley Best: I think the flipping of three House seats in the direction of the Democrats. If we stand that up against the fact that that Donald Trump won the state of Iowa by 13 points in a state, you know, statewide in in 2024, lends itself to the suspicion that that there is an instability right now in in the electorate and an instability in the the overall direction that the strength of the two parties are going to take. And Patrick spoke earlier about the the Republican coalition. Just you know, how stable was that coalition? What how cohesive was all of that?
And I think we're going to be asking that question very soon about the Democrats, as as historic and tidal as this wave is, I I also sense that there is a certain instability that the Democrats are going to going to encounter right away.
They're going to have they're going to be on a very short clock in terms of in terms of responding to to step away again from the the integrity and the sort of the overall sort of climate of our politics. They're going to be on a very short clock in terms of turning around some kind of meaningful response, if possible, to the state of the economy, and and and doing something to move our our foreign policy in a new direction.
Patrick McKinlay: But and that's where we go back to your question about you know the is there that deeper underlying? So if if corruption and truth, or lack of truth, in politics, is is really the the agitating component of this, where do they where do they allocate their their energy and their time?
Julia Hellwege: Well, and I think if we're thinking about what are the implications of all of this, right? Like, yeah, Democrats are on a short time frame to, I think, keep momentum if it's about the the truthiness, right? But also make policy change if it's about the practical politics, and I think this is where it's really challenging as well.
Again, sort of voters wanted to see more balance; they wanted to see a shift, but now, you know, how are they going to govern with a Republican president who has made it very clear that he intends on vetoing everything and anything that the Democrats do. And how do the voters respond when they have elected all these Democrats to enact this change, and they're not able to do anything? And I think that's going to be very challenging for for Democrats to to keep that momentum for two years while not being, most likely, not being able to claim a lot of credit. And I think there's you know at least one potential implication of all of this to me is that it may end up resulting in even greater number of executive orders on the part of the president, and so I think the question is going to be how voters are going to respond to that. Are they going to continue to respond and say, you know, the Republican president is is strong handedly doing a lot of, potentially, right, damage if this is the way it goes? Or are they going to credit the Democrats for trying to impose something?
And I think a lot of this is going to come up with some of the top issues, foreign policy issues, obviously the economy, but also things... If it's about corruption, well, are there going to be impeachment procedures, right? And not to open a whole can of worms here either, but potentially, right, the Epstein files and things like that that people have been asking about, those are things that Congress can look into, even if they're unable to sort of pass a lot of legislation without presidential approval.
Bradley Best: You know, I think Julia says something really, really important and insightful here, and and I'm going to begin this comment just with a little bit of snark. How interesting that that our president puts on a cap with again "veto" written across the top, and for the first time, seemingly he is now aware of the concept of separation of powers. That's not really been something that has guided a lot of his maneuvering in the course of either of his presidencies, but now he's yet now he's ready to to in fact deploy that.
And I think what what Julia's observation, what I think is so important about that is is that we now have sort of the perfect case of divided government, right? And that is a Congress unwilling to go along is likely to just send Trump moving ever further outward toward that that outer boundary of of executive power, so I would absolutely anticipate more and at higher frequency and at a faster pace the sort of the sort of constitutional collisions that occur in the in the in the context of executive power and assertions of congressional power against that.
Julia Hellwege: Well, I'm bringing it back locally. I think one thing that's in common between this national question and at least South Dakota is going to be what's that leadership going to look like? Who is going to take the position of majority leadership, both on the part of Republicans and the part of Democrats nationally in Congress. But I think that's a really interesting question in South Dakota as well as a lot of the MAGA Republicans who won in the last session lost their seats in the primary, and South Dakota also picked up four Democratic seats, the largest increase since 2008.
And so, what is the leadership going to look like, and how are they going to bring back the cohesion of the party in both of those spaces? I think is really interesting.
Mark Munger: It is interesting, and we'll be watching. I'll I'll be listening. Thank you all for working with me. I know that was not your plan, but I appreciate it. It's been an illuminating conversation for me, and I feel privileged to get to sit at the table with all of you. So thanks a lot.
Julia Hellwege: Pleasure. Thank you.
Patrick McKinlay: Thank you.
Mark Munger: Bradley Best, Professor of Political Science at Buena Vista University, Julia Hellwege, the Diane Jones Meier Distinguished Professor of Gender and Public Policy at the University of South Dakota, and Patrick McKinlay, professor of political science at Morningside University, joined me for an election wrap. Bret Hayworth had originally intended to host, but he is temporarily out. This is a Manager's Special from Siouxland Public Media. I'm Mark Munger.
[1] Editor’s note: In the exchange immediately following this statement, the speakers clarify that white men also shifted toward Democrats, but that the Democratic share of their vote remained below 50%. A shift toward a party does not necessarily mean that a majority of the group voted for that party. ↩
