The seat Joni Ernst is walking away from — and the closest Iowa Senate race in a generation.
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THE RACE
Trump carried Iowa by 13 points in 2024. No Democrat has won an Iowa Senate seat since Tom Harkin in 2008. On paper, this shouldn’t be close. It is anyway.
A late-June Fox News poll — not a Democratic pollster, Fox’s own survey — found Josh Turek leading Ashley Hinson 50% to 46% among registered voters. The same poll found Trump underwater in Iowa by 13 points net favorability, a 19-point swing from his positive rating there in November 2024. Turek’s own net favorability sits at +18; Hinson’s is underwater at -7, worse than her own party’s president in the state that elected him twice.
The primary’s long over — both candidates cleared the field back in June. The general is November 3.
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JOSH TUREK (D) — THE PARALYMPIAN RUNNING AS A “PRAIRIE POPULIST”
Turek is a two-time Paralympic gold medalist in wheelchair basketball and a state representative who has represented one of the most conservative districts in Iowa — a credential he leans on hard, framing himself explicitly as a “commonsense prairie populist” in the Tom Harkin mold rather than a national-party culture warrior. He beat state Sen. Zach Wahls in the Democratic primary, and the field consolidated behind him fast: rival candidate J.D. Scholten dropped out early and endorsed him directly, calling him the strongest general-election candidate in the field.
His pitch is built almost entirely around healthcare and cost of living — the two issues polling shows Iowans care about most right now.
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ASHLEY HINSON (R) — THE RECORD SHE’S RUNNING AWAY FROM
Hinson has represented Iowa in the House since 2021 and won Trump’s endorsement early, clearing her primary with only nominal opposition. But her voting record is becoming the central issue of the race, not a footnote to it — and it’s Iowa Republicans, not just Democratic groups, doing some of the loudest complaining.
On healthcare: Hinson voted for the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which cut federal health spending by roughly $1 trillion over ten years — cuts research group KFF estimates will leave 68,000 Iowans on Medicaid without insurance by 2034. She’s also repeatedly voted against extending ACA premium tax credits, and without them, more than 120,000 Iowans saw monthly insurance premiums jump by an average of 95%, according to a Daily Iowan analysis of KFF data. A Reuters report from earlier this month quoted lifelong Iowa Republicans — not Democrats — saying “something needs to change,” with one 72-year-old GOP voter citing hospital closures and worrying about her great-grandson, who relies on Medicaid for diabetes management.
On tariffs: Hinson has voted four times to keep Trump’s tariffs in place. Whirlpool’s Amana, Iowa plant — the exact kind of manufacturer tariffs were supposed to protect — has cut to a single assembly line from five, and workers there have publicly said they feel “betrayed” by her promises.
On her own finances: Hinson’s net worth has grown up to 10x since entering Congress — as much as $7.5 million, largely from individual stock trades — while she has refused to sign a bipartisan discharge petition that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks while in office.
A caveat worth stating plainly: most of this record data is compiled and circulated by the Iowa Democratic Party and American Bridge PAC, both explicitly partisan sources. The underlying vote counts and dollar figures trace back to congressional voting records and FEC/OpenSecrets data, which are verifiable — but the framing and emphasis come from Hinson’s opponents, not neutral fact-checkers, and that distinction is worth preserving in how this gets published.
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WHY THIS RACE MATTERS TO PROJECT ZERO
The Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund is already planning to spend $29 million defending this seat — a sign the GOP itself doesn’t consider it safe. If a state Trump won by 13 points flips, it’s not a fluke; it’s the floor moving. Zero counts this one among the races where the map itself is being redrawn in real time.
SCOREBOARD UPDATE: — Iowa Senate. Status: Toss-up, Turek leading in recent polling. General: November 3.
— Project Zero Club | projectzero.club