DES MOINES, Iowa — The Associated Press has called Iowa's U.S. Senate race for Democrat Josh Turek, a state representative from Council Bluffs who defeated Republican U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson on Tuesday, November 3, flipping one of the most competitive Senate seats in the country and — according to NPR's analysis of the AP's race calls — delivering the victory that secured a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. Turek will succeed retiring Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who announced last fall that she would not seek a third term.
Source: Associated Press election results — U.S. Senate, Iowa
The AP called the race at about 9:19 p.m. Central Time, and its count late on election night put Turek on 668,957 votes to Hinson's 612,522 — a margin of 56,435 votes — with 94.99 percent of precincts reporting and an estimated 95.66 percent of the total vote counted. Iowa's Secretary of State figures pointed the same way from early in the evening: at 9:15 p.m. the state's count had Turek on 226,730 votes (54.0 percent) to Hinson's 181,698 (43.3 percent), with Libertarian Thomas Laehn on 11,269 (2.7 percent). All of these figures are unofficial until county and state canvasses certify them.
This was not one race in isolation. Republicans entered election day holding the Senate 53–47, and Democrats needed a net gain of four seats to reach the 51 needed for a majority, because a 50–50 chamber would stay Republican on Vice President JD Vance's tie-breaking vote. NPR reported that Democrats got there with flips in six states — North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Kansas and Iowa — and that the chamber was secured when the AP called Iowa for Turek. Control of the Senate gives Democrats the committee chairmanships and a decisive say over President Donald Trump's nominations and legislation for the final two years of his term.
A campaign fought on prices, trade and diesel
Iowa is a farm state whose economy runs on corn, soybeans, hogs and the trucks that move them, and the campaign was fought squarely on costs. NBC News reporting on the race said Turek tied Hinson to Trump and to a Republican agenda in Washington that proved unpopular in Iowa, hammering her repeated votes backing Trump's trade war, which has hurt Iowa producers and consumers, and the war with Iran, which has contributed to rising prices for gas, diesel fuel and the goods transported into and around the state. For months, published surveys showed a contest within the margin of error, some with Hinson ahead and others with Turek in front.
The nominations had set up the clash in June. Turek won a contested Democratic primary against state Senator Zach Wahls by 63 percent to 37 percent, with the tacit backing of Democratic leaders in Washington. Hinson's path was smoother: Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott of South Carolina endorsed her in the fall of 2025, helping her clear the field of serious rivals, and she won her primary with 75 percent of the vote. On October 21, Trump held a rally in Sioux City to bolster Hinson and other Iowa Republican candidates, and Hinson told NBC Nightly News the same day that she was not disappointed in the president — a loyalty Turek's campaign used against her all autumn.
The result makes Turek the first Democrat Iowa voters have sent to the U.S. Senate since 2008, ending an 18-year Republican hold on the state's Senate elections despite Iowa backing Trump three times, most recently by 13 points over Kamala Harris in 2024. It is a striking reversal for a state that much of Washington had filed as reliably Republican.
Interstate 80 runs straight through Iowa, and Punjabi owner-operators cross the state on the coast-to-coast freight run every day of the year. What Iowa's senators do on trade, farm policy and fuel costs lands on the producers who grow the freight and on diesel prices at the pump — and this race was decided, in large part, on exactly those prices.
What happens next
The counting is not formally finished. Iowa counties will complete their canvasses and the state will certify the result in the coming days; the AP's call is a projection based on the counted vote, not the certification itself, and the remaining ballots are not expected to change the outcome given the size of Turek's lead and the share already counted. Turek will be sworn in when the new Congress convenes in January 2027, alongside the state's senior senator, Chuck Grassley.
In Washington, the flip completes the map of a changed Senate: a Democratic majority, elected in a midterm that voters used — exit polling cited by Reuters suggested about half of voters saw the night as a chance to rebuke Trump, and 70 percent wanted stronger congressional checks on presidential power — to end two years of unified Republican control. For Iowa, the immediate story is simpler: a state representative from Council Bluffs ran on the price of diesel, groceries and trade, and a state that had not elected a Democratic senator in 18 years sent him to Washington.