2020 United States presidential election in Iowa

The 2020 United States presidential election in Iowa was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Iowa voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump of Florida, and his running mate Vice President Mike Pence of Indiana against Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware, and his running mate California Senator Kamala Harris. Iowa has six electoral votes in the Electoral College. Trump won the state 53 % to Biden's 44 %. Prior to this election, most news organizations had considered Iowa as either leaning towards Trump or a tossup. As was the case in Ohio, this election has confirmed Iowa's trend from a Midwestern swing state toward the GOP column, the same trend as neighboring Missouri starting in 2008. Iowa had voted Democratic in six of seven elections prior to 2016, the exception being George W. Bush's narrow plurality win in 2004. In 2016, however, Iowa voted for Trump by an unexpectedly large margin of 9 %, voting over ten points to the right of the nation overall, indicating a possible realignment of the previously Democratic-leaning state towards the GOP, much as in the case of West Virginia in 2000 and 2004. Even though Biden contested the state, Trump ended up carrying it by only a slightly reduced margin of 8 % even as his national margin of defeat grew by 2 %, meaning that the state voted even further to the right of the national average than it did in 2016. This marked the first time since 2000 that the state voted for the national loser, and the first since 1988 that it voted for the loser of the popular and electoral vote. Biden improved on Hillary Clinton's margins in the Des Moines and Cedar Rapids metropolitan areas and traditionally conservative western Iowa, the latter of which borders Nebraska's 2nd congressional district (Omaha metropolitan area), an electoral vote Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Trump improved on his 2016 performance in populist northeast and south Iowa and became the first Republican to win Iowa in back-to-back elections since Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Biden also became the first Democrat to be elected president without winning Iowa since Jimmy Carter in 1976. This is also the first time since 2004 that Iowa voted for a different candidate than neighboring Wisconsin. Iowa is one of only three states that voted twice for Barack Obama and thrice for Trump, the other two being Florida and Ohio.