This year’s filing deadline for candidates running for Congress in Iowa was March 15, 2024.
Eleven candidates are running for Iowa’s four U.S. House districts, including five Democrats and six Republicans. That’s 2.75 candidates per district, higher than the 2.5 candidates per district in 2022 but lower than the 4.5 candidates per district in 2020.
Here are some other highlights from this year’s filings:
- No seats are open this year, meaning all incumbents are running for re-election. One House seat was open in 2020, and two were open in 2014, the only two years this decade in which House seats were open.
- Three congressional districts—the 1st, the 3rd, and the 4th—are tied for the most candidates running for a seat in Iowa this year. Three candidates are running in each district.
- Three primaries—one Democratic and two Republican—are contested this year. That’s more than the one primary that was contested in 2022 but less than the four primaries that were contested in 2020.
- Two incumbents—Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-1) and Randy Feenstra (R-4)—are in contested primaries, tying with 2016 for the most this decade.
- Candidates filed to run in the Republican and Democratic primaries in all districts, meaning no seats are guaranteed to either party.
Iowa and four other states—Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota—are holding primary elections on June 4.
In Iowa, the winner of a primary election is the candidate who receives the greatest number of votes, even if they do not win an outright majority of votes cast.
