In Fairfield, Iowa, Bob Ferguson sees an opening that many Democrats had written off. Sitting inside a packed former Presbyterian church, the local business executive and city council member said the state is “getting purple,” adding, “You can feel it.”

That possibility comes after Donald Trump carried Iowa by more than 13 points in 2024. Rather than chasing the political center, Democrats are embracing economic populism focused on corporations, monopolies, absentee owners, and investors with little connection to the communities where they operate.

Trump tried to generate economic momentum by announcing a $15 billion steel plant with low carbon production in southeast Iowa. But the owner, Mesabi Metallics, is a subsidiary of Essar Group, an India based firm, reinforcing concerns about absentee ownership in the state.

Ferguson was among roughly 100 people attending a fundraiser for Chris Jones, a self described populist Democrat running for secretary of agriculture. Jones has centered his campaign on clean water as concerns about agricultural pollution intersect with Iowa’s high rate of cancer diagnoses.

The message is also driving campaigns farther up the ballot. Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek and gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand are betting that voters who moved toward Trump can be persuaded by a sharper focus on who controls Iowa’s economy.

Turek, a state representative and two time Paralympic gold medalist in wheelchair basketball, calls himself a “common-sense prairie populist.” He is running against Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson after Republican incumbent Joni Ernst decided not to seek reelection.

Sand repeatedly describes his campaign as “Well fed versus fed up.” Both he and Turek are promising to confront monopolies and consolidation in agribusiness, meatpacking, and health care while targeting Wall Street ownership of farmland and homes.

The approach challenges years of Republican claims to represent farmers, small business owners, and working people. Kurt Meyer, a longtime grassroots activist and former Democratic Party chair in rural northern Iowa, said Republicans captured the state’s populist energy more effectively after Trump’s rise.

Meyer believes Democrats have learned from those failures while voters continue confronting mortgage rates and gas prices well above averages from Trump’s first term. Trump themed “I Did This” stickers now appear beside Iowa fuel pumps, echoing similar stickers featuring Joe Biden in 2022.

Charles Wishman of the Iowa Federation of Labor, which represents more than 42,000 workers across roughly 280 local unions, sees perception as central to the shift. “Usually, Democrats don’t know how to talk like normal people. That’s it. That’s almost all the problem.”

Polling suggests Democrats have a genuine opportunity, although the contests remain unsettled. A late September Fox News poll of likely voters showed Turek leading Hinson 49% to 47%, while Sand led Republican Zach Lahn 53% to 44%.

That poll found the cost of living was the leading issue, with 6 in 10 voters calling it extremely important to their Senate choice. It ranked ahead of Trump, immigration, and artificial intelligence.

Other polls produced different margins but similarly showed competitive races. A September Marist poll of registered voters gave Turek a lead of eight points, while an Emerson poll earlier that month put Hinson ahead by five points and Sand ahead by three.

Independent voters appear especially important to the Democratic coalition. Marist found Turek leading independents by 11 points and Sand leading them by 26 points, a potentially significant shift in a state that has moved sharply right over the past decade.

Trump won Iowa by 13.2 percentage points in 2024 with 55.7% of the vote after winning by 9.4 points in both 2020 and 2016. No Democrat has won an Iowa U.S. Senate election since 2008, and Chet Culver was the last Democrat elected governor, in 2006.

Republicans retain a considerable registration advantage, with 39% of active registered voters compared with roughly 28% for Democrats. Another 33% have no party registration, leaving a substantial bloc available to candidates who can make their economic message stick.

Lahn has faced dubious claims about being a family farmer and residency questions because his family lives in Kansas. Yet he is also using populist language, promising tighter corporate farming laws and restrictions preventing investors and hedge funds from pricing local families out of property.

Farmers remain a pivotal and unsettled constituency. Soybean farmer Dave Walton said rising insurance, energy, and food expenses, along with tariffs, the war in Iran, diesel prices up nearly 80%, and rising interest rates, have created a difficult economic environment.

“The economic message really resonates with a lot of people right now,” Walton said. For Iowa Democrats, the gamble is that voters will believe their promises to challenge concentrated corporate power, rather than the Republicans suddenly borrowing the same vocabulary.