Iowa Martha
 | |
| Era | The Modern Era |
|---|---|
| Age | 65+ |
| Home | Cedar Rapids, IA |
| Demographic | small-town, white, retired |
| Lean | Strong Republican |
| Race | white |
| Predecessor | Jasper Faye |
Martha is a retired school administrator in Cedar Rapids who attends church and watches Fox News. She believes the country has abandoned the standards she was raised on, and she represents the party's older white conservative voters, the most reliable and least persuadable part of the electorate.
Who they stand for
Martha represents the older, white, small-town Republican woman of the Plains and upper Midwest, the kind of voter who turned Iowa from a state that Obama won twice into one Trump carried twice by wide margins. Her generation still attends church every week, still watches cable news at fixed times, and votes in every primary, midterm, and school-board election. In the 2016 Iowa caucus she preferred Ted Cruz, a pastor's son. By that November she had made her peace with Trump, and by 2020 that peace had become loyalty, because he had appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
Cullman Eula fought against abortion, and Jasper Faye fought against same-sex marriage and for Terri Schiavo. Martha fights over transgender children, school libraries, and what she calls wokeness, because the earlier fights were lost in 1973 and 2015 and this one has not yet been decided. Her sources of information have narrowed to Fox News alone, part of why she and much of the country describe current events so differently. She and Heartland Hank represent much the same vote, differing mainly in that her concerns are cultural before they are agricultural.
Playing to them
Martha supports a president who defends the church, the military, and the flag together, backs Israel, keeps taxes and spending low, and treats border security as a security question rather than a humanitarian one. She wants Social Security and Medicare left untouched, because she paid into both, and a Republican who talks about entitlement reform within her hearing has forgotten who actually votes. She will not forgive a president who moves towards expanding transgender rights, abortion access, or gun control, and she notices when a president seems embarrassed by Christians.
She is nearly free for a Republican to win and nearly impossible for a Democrat to win, so the real question for a Republican is how little he needs to spend to keep her support. Everything she wants on cultural issues costs the support of College Chloe, Brooklyn Jamal, Woodstock Allen, and Bay Area Priya at the same time, and her position on abortion costs the support of Plain Jane and Suburban Sarah as well. A Republican who wants to hold the suburban vote must keep Martha's social agenda in the party platform and out of actual executive orders.
Where they live
The five states where Iowa Martha makes up the largest share of the electorate in the modern era:
- South Dakota
- North Dakota
- Iowa
- West Virginia
- Nebraska
Lineage
Cullman Eula → Jasper Faye → Iowa Martha
The church lady. Her issue changes each decade because the previous one was lost: abortion, then marriage and Schiavo, then transgender and woke. Her information source changes from the church, to the church and Fox News, to Fox News alone. Her certainty that her side would win becomes the belief that America has lost its way. The voter is the same in Alabama and in Iowa.