Christina Bohannan, a Democrat and former state legislator, defeated Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, according to The Associated Press, flipping a critical Republican-held seat and delivering a significant victory for Democrats in their bid to win control of the House.
Ms. Bohannan’s victory represented the end of a long political battle against Ms. Miller-Meeks, a third-term Republican who had repeatedly held off Democratic challenges by narrow margins, including by just 799 votes over Ms. Bohannan in 2024.
But this year, with President Trump’s approval ratings sinking and his economic agenda increasingly unpopular, Ms. Miller-Meeks — like many Republicans across the country — faced a substantially more difficult political environment.
By the final weeks of the campaign, two of the most powerful Republican super PACs had effectively abandoned her, withdrawing millions of dollars in planned advertising as party strategists concluded that her seat in a competitive district spanning southeastern Iowa and the Quad Cities area had become increasingly difficult to defend.
Ms. Bohannan, a law professor who previously served in the Iowa Legislature, made the rising cost of living, federal health care cuts and the war with Iran central to her campaign, arguing that Ms. Miller-Meeks had consistently placed loyalty to Mr. Trump ahead of the interests of her constituents.
During their only debate, in October, Ms. Bohannan criticized the incumbent for repeatedly opposing congressional efforts to halt the war before reversing course as public opinion turned against it.
“The American people are hurting; they don’t want this war,” Ms. Bohannan said, calling Republicans in Congress “a rubber stamp the entire time.”
Ms. Miller-Meeks, a former ophthalmologist and military veteran, defended her record. She promoted the tax cuts Republicans enacted last year as part of their major domestic policy law and claimed that the deep cuts to Medicaid included in that measure would preserve benefits for those who needed them.
She also maintained that Mr. Trump’s tariffs would help bring manufacturing jobs to Iowa and said her decision to drop her opposition to a resolution to rein in Mr. Trump’s power to wage war with Iran reflected changing circumstances.
Ms. Bohannan argued that the administration’s tariffs were hurting Iowa farmers and that Republican cuts to Medicaid threatened rural hospitals already struggling to remain open.
Ms. Bohannan’s victory was especially significant given her previous defeats. Ms. Miller-Meeks beat her by roughly seven percentage points in 2022 before surviving their rematch two years later by fewer than 800 votes, one of the narrowest margins in the country.
Rather than retreat after those losses, Ms. Bohannan mounted another campaign focused on reaching voters in the district’s rural communities and smaller towns, including places that had supported Mr. Trump.
For Ms. Miller-Meeks, who had survived several exceptionally close elections, the loss means the end of a run in Congress that began with a victory by just six votes in 2020.
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