A Democrat appeared to flip a conservative-leaning State Senate seat in Iowa on Tuesday, according to unofficial results, in a special election that did little to shift the balance of power in Des Moines but that Democrats saw as a sign of engagement among liberal voters in the early days of President Trump’s second term.
The candidate, Mike Zimmer, an educator, appeared to win the seat for Democrats in a heavily Republican part of eastern Iowa that Mr. Trump carried by large margins. Mr. Zimmer ran on a message of support for public schools in his district, which runs along the Mississippi River and includes the city of Clinton.
“Our campaign’s values of hard work and fairness resonated with a bipartisan coalition of voters,” Mr. Zimmer said in a statement on Facebook.
With all precincts reporting, Mr. Zimmer led his Republican opponent, Katie Whittington, by about 4 percentage points, or nearly 340 votes, according to unofficial results from the Iowa secretary of state’s office. State and county election officials told The New York Times on Wednesday said that only a handful of outstanding ballots were still eligible to be counted, far short of the number that would be required to change the result.
The seat became vacant last month when Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed former Senator Chris Cournoyer as lieutenant governor. Ms. Cournoyer, a Republican, carried the district by 22 percentage points in 2022.
Special elections can produce surprising results, often with low turnouts that skew heavily toward the most engaged voters. Early in Mr. Trump’s first term, for instance, a Wisconsin Democrat decisively won a special election for State Senate, only to lose the seat by a large margin in the next regularly scheduled election.
Still, Mr. Zimmer’s performance in Iowa was seen as a symbolic boost to Democrats at a moment when the party is out of power in Washington and reeling from last year’s electoral losses.
Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said the vote in Iowa “puts Republicans across the country on notice.”
In special elections this month in Virginia, Democrats won two legislative seats that their party had previously held, while Republicans won in a conservative-leaning district. And on Tuesday in Minnesota, a Democrat appeared to win a special election for State Senate in a solidly liberal part of the state, restoring the party to a majority in that chamber.
Mr. Zimmer’s strong showing came at a low moment for Democrats in Iowa, a former swing state that has trended sharply toward Republicans since Mr. Trump became the leader of that party. Republicans hold large majorities in both legislative chambers, a fact that Mr. Zimmer’s presence at the Capitol will not change, and only one elected Democrat remains in a statewide office.
Iowa Republicans have used their power in recent years to pass laws on abortion, immigration and transgender issues.
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