Will Iowa break up with Obama?

Iowa voters may be on the verge of ending their love affair with President Obama.

Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst holds a lead in polls over Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in a state Democrats once assumed they’d hold on to easily.

Now it seems possible that, if Iowa elected Ernst, it would take away the Senate’s Democratic majority from President Obama in the process.

The Hawkeye State holds a special place in Obama’s heart. His victory in the state’s caucuses in January 2008 was the rocket fuel that launched him on the path to the Democratic nomination. 

That November, Iowans gave Obama their stamp of approval in the general election. Four years later, he won the state again. 

Obama held the final rally of the 2012 campaign in Des Moines. It was an emotional affair with the president pointing out the site of his 2008 headquarters and declaring, “I came back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote. I came back to ask you to help us finish what we’ve started. Because this is where our movement for change began.”

These days, Iowa looks as if it could be the state where that movement ends. {mosads}

Braley has been a disappointing candidate, and the current Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Ernst holding a 2.8 percentage-point lead.

The highly-regarded Des Moines Register poll contained even worse news for Democrats: it recently showed Ernst leading by six points. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website gives Ernst a 59 percent chance of victory.

To be sure, Braley’s performance on the campaign trail has contributed to his current predicament. He denigrated popular Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) as “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school” — an affront in the ag-heavy state.  David Yepsen, who covered politics in Iowa for decades for the Des Moines Register, told The Hill the remark was “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard”. 

Braley has also been involved in a dispute involving a neighbor’s chickens wandering onto his property.

Still, Braley’s self-inflicted wounds don’t obscure the fact that Obama has grown deeply unpopular in Iowa. 

Three out of four polls in the past month showed those with a negative view of Obama’s job performance outnumbering those with a positive view by more than 10 percentage points. 

Two polls, from CNN and FOX, showed the share of Iowans who back Obama’s job performance dipping below 40 percent. The most recent of the polls came from Public Policy Polling, a liberal firm. It showed 53 percent of Iowans disapproving of Obama and only 40 percent approving.

Even Democrats admit that the luster has come off of Obama, though they are loath to pin the blame directly on the president.

“I think the natural tendency is for support to slip, for enthusiasm to slip,” said Barbara Trish, a political science professor at Grinnell College and a Democratic activist. “Naturally, [presidents] sometimes don’t follow through on their promises or, more likely, are unsuccessful in trying to follow through on their promises.”

She added that she did not believe there was “anything unique about Iowa” in this respect. But she did acknowledge that, for liberals in the state, “maybe given their investment in the [presidential] races, especially in 2008, there may be a little more disappointment.”

Des Moines-based Democratic strategist Greg Hauenstein agreed, noting, “I’m sure there has been some disappointment. There is no such thing as a perfect candidate. You get the impression of someone and you have all these lofty ideals. And then, once you get to Washington, things change.”

The race in Iowa is, of course, also subject to broader national tides. Yepsen noted “the growth of the stock market is not felt on Main Street” and that many working people were still struggling even as unemployment falls.

“The energy in the race is on the Republican side,” Yepsen added.

Some ideological opponents of Obama note that he — and, by extension, Democrats — are falling victim to a general dissatisfaction with the body politic.

Voters “are looking at Washington and saying, ‘It is not operating well,’” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa who now runs a website called TheIowaRepublican.

“We all get wrapped up in, ‘Is this a referendum on ObamaCare or on the economy?’” Robinson added. “I think people turn on the news at night and there is example after example of their government just not working.”

Even as polls bring unfavorable news for Democrats, however, they insist Braley has a fighting chance. Their confidence rests upon Obama, in a sense: The ground operation that his campaign created for the 2008 caucuses carried through to the 2008 and 2012 general elections. It can win one more race, they assert.

“The Democratic ground game here in Iowa is something to behold,” said Hauenstein. Asked if that infrastructure could deliver victory, he replied, “I know it can.”

The Obama operation, Trish asserted, “is very much still on the ground. The Obama model is the model Democrats have been trying to emulate.”

But can they do so, in a year when Obama’s popularity has fallen and his name is not on the ballot? 

Trish seemed less sure.

“If you knew the answer to that, you’d probably have a good sense of who is going to win on Election Day,” she said.