IA Senate · 2026
Republicans are strongly favored to win this seat
89% probability
Candidates
Last verified 2026-11-02.
Joshua Mark Turek is an American politician and wheelchair basketball player serving as a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from the 20th district.
Ashley Elizabeth Hinson is an American politician and journalist serving as the U.S. representative for Iowa's 2nd congressional district since 2021.
Open seat -- the current officeholder is a Republican, who is not running.
Not applicable to this race: Candidate fundraising split (state filings), State campaign finance data available · Built on annual structural data, current release 2026-05-29: State mood: Domestic Stability, State mood: Isolation. See /status for current data freshness.
Fundraising as of 2026-10-14 (FEC filings).
Why we think this
- This state's baseline partisan lean favors Republicans by about 18 points of margin before anything else is considered.
- This is an open seat: the current officeholder (a Republican) is not on the ballot, which tends to make the race more competitive than a defended seat.
- Separately, current public mood in this state specifically is shifting strongly toward Republicans, on top of the structural baseline.
- Independently, the national midterm environment is shifting every race this cycle significantly toward Democrats -- a separate, nationwide force layered on top of the state-specific factors above, not a restatement of them.
Same pattern as the Governor race: an outperforming statewide Democrat our structural model does not credit. External signals disagree with us here and that disagreement is information.
Model details -- coefficients, calibration, and the full technical decomposition.
Model sengov-2026-govmoney-v2 · computed 2026-11-09