Two key congressional races will be decided by Iowa voters who say clean water is a top priority, a new survey finds.
Eighty-five percent of voters in Iowa’s first and third U.S. House districts say they would be more likely to vote for an elected official who prioritizes protecting clean water, including cutting industrial agriculture pollution. Global Strategy Group conducted the poll on behalf of Food & Water Action, the political and lobbying arm of environmental watchdog organization Food & Water Watch.
“It’s very clear that Iowa’s water crisis has reached a boiling point, as our polling shows voters are fed up with the inaction and backtracking that they’re seeing in Washington and Des Moines,” said Food & Water Action Political Director Sam Bernhardt at a Tuesday press conference. “Candidates ignore Iowa’s water crisis at their political peril. Embracing pollution regulations for industrial agriculture may well hold the keys to Congress.”
After three years as the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats need to win three additional seats in the midterms to regain control. Two of those seats could come from vulnerable, narrowly Republican districts in Iowa.
House Majority PAC, one of the largest financial backers for Democrats in U.S. House races, listed Iowa’s first and third congressional districts as “top targets” in the 2026 midterms. Both were listed among fourteen Republican-held “toss-up” districts by the Cook Political Report.
The incumbent for Iowa’s 1st congressional district, U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, narrowly held her seat in 2024, defeating democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by less than 800 votes. The congressional race was the second-tightest in the country and Bohannan will once again challenge Miller-Meeks this year.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn, the Republican incumbent for Iowa’s 3rd District, won reelection in 2024 with just 52 percent of the vote. His district spans across much of south-central Iowa, including the populous Des Moines metropolitan area, where elevated nitrate levels in drinking water sources have strained treatment facilities.
In December, both Miller-Meeks and Nunn voted to pass the PERMIT Act, a bill that drastically limits the scope of the Clean Water Act and permits the unregulated discharge of certain pesticides and agricultural stormwater into protected waters. Both representatives have also voted in favor of cuts to EPA funding and Medicaid.
“Neither of these members of Congress have so much as acknowledged that Iowa’s water and cancer crises even exist,” Bernhardt said. “Our polling suggests that this will be a key vulnerability this election cycle.”
Heading into the midterms, Iowa’s water and cancer crises are clear electoral priorities for voters across party lines, on par with or outpacing concerns about the cost of living, said Jefrey Pollock, president of Global Strategy Group. Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the U.S., a public health crisis that residents worry is tied to consistently elevated nitrate levels in their drinking water sources.
In late January and early February, Global Strategy Group surveyed 600 registered voters in Iowa, with demographic, political and geographic breakdowns mirroring those of the state’s electorate.
According to their survey, 79 percent of Iowa voters support mandatory requirements for industrial agriculture to reduce pollution. That support jumped to 85 percent of voters in Miller-Meeks’ district and 83 percent of voters in Nunn’s district.
Yet, at the state level, proposals to regulate agricultural sources of water pollution have been non-starters. For decades, lawmakers have stuck to the state’s Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which prioritizes and rewards voluntary on-field and edge-of-field conservation practices.
Adoption of those practices is on the rise, but so are nitrate levels in state waterways. The two-year-long Central Iowa Source Water Research Assessment, commissioned by Polk County, attributed 80 percent of all nitrates in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers to agricultural fertilizers.
Despite lawmakers’ resistance to using both the stick and the carrot on water pollution, regulations for industrial agriculture were popular even among the 38 percent of survey respondents with direct ties to the farm and agriculture industry, Pollock reported. Responses of voters in the farm industry were consistent with those of voters without ties to the industry, he said.
“Everybody knows about the farm economy and how important it is, but the reality is, voters are prioritizing their clean water and their health,” Pollock said. “Voters are in favor of regulation over deference to the industry.”
“It’s not what you might assume if you sampled the Iowa State Legislature, but it’s pretty clear that Iowans want to see action,” said Bernhardt, with Food & Water Action. “There’s a bipartisan, deeply held belief that not only is this a crisis, but that there are clear solutions to it.”
Iowa state Rep. Austin Baeth, a physician and a Democrat who represents part of Iowa’s 3rd congressional district, said he is “not at all surprised” by the findings of the survey. “I’ve been advocating for a long time that improving Iowa’s water quality is a winning issue,” Baeth said.
Over the last few years, Iowa’s rising cancer rates have brought residents of all political stripes into conversations about the water that flows from their taps, Baeth said. Yet even Democratic lawmakers in Des Moines have been hesitant to push for more regulations on the agricultural industry, fearing it would be “politically perilous,” he said.
“For economic reasons, it’s important that we don’t do things that adversely affect the agricultural economy. But at the same time, we need to protect the health of every Iowan,” Baeth said. “And there are ways to do both, but people have to be willing to even admit there’s a problem in the first place.”
Clarification: This story was updated February 17 to state that Democrats last controlled the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023.
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
Anika Jane Beamer
Reporter, Iowa
Anika Jane Beamer covers the environment and climate change in Iowa, with a particular focus on water, soil and CAFOs. A lifelong Midwesterner, she writes about changing ecosystems from one of the most transformed landscapes on the continent. She holds a master’s degree in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a bachelor’s degree in biology and Spanish from Grinnell College. She is a former Outrider Fellow at Inside Climate News and was named a Taylor-Blakeslee Graduate Fellow by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
