SharonClark
SharonClark's JournalPolk County (IA) - How they did it....
That margin of 35,009 votes meant Cindy Axne got elected to Congress, even though the Republicans kept every other county in the 3rd District red. It meant that we flipped Republican seats in the suburbs for Karin Derry, Jennifer Konfrst, Heather Matson, and Kristin Sunde. It meant that we helped elect Michael Fitzgerald, Tom Miller, and Rob Sand to statewide office. And it meant that we held on to every incumbent seat in Polk County.
So, how’d it happen? First, we had exceptional candidates. All four of the pick-up races were women and the women of Polk County were more mobilized than ever before. The volunteer campaign teams behind these candidates were some of the sharpest I’ve ever seen. We’ll spend the next several months talking to those teams about what they did well, how we can even better support them, and how we can replicate their results.
The new Polk County Democratic Party helped those numbers too. Our aggressive voter registration efforts helped us beat the Republicans in 3rd District registration in October. Our countywide mailer brought in thousands of absentee ballots. Our 19 billboards on Election Day directed voters to our Polk County homepage which had every polling site in Polk County along with the number for our Polk County hotline (ie my cell phone number). Our three day ballot chase operation with more than 100 volunteers made more than 7,000 calls, picked up every ballot, transported every voter, and answered countless questions in several different languages.
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Sean Bagniewski
Polk County Democratic Party Chair
Polk County (IA) 2018 Midterm margin beat the 2008 and 2012 Presidential margins!
"35,009. That’s how many more Democratic than Republican votes came out of Polk County for the Governor’s race on Tuesday night. It’s the highest margin from Polk County in our history. Although it wasn’t enough to overcome numbers in the rest of the state, it blew the doors off our historical numbers for both gubernatorial races AND presidential years. That means we even beat the margins that President Barack Obama carried Polk County with in both 2008 and 2012
Polk County Democratic Margin Over Republicans (Presidential or Gubernatorial)
2018: 35,009 (gubernatorial)
2016: 26,312 (presidential)
2014: -8,586 (gubernatorial)
2012: 32,369 (presidential)
2010: -538 (gubernatorial)
2008: 31,316 (presidential)
2006: 21,075 (gubernatorial)
2004: 9,390 (presidential)
2002: 20,377 (gubernatorial)
2000: 9,688 (presidential)"
I'm so proud of our Polk county Dems.
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