Iowa Democrats are at a "low point" in the wake of their disastrous 2020 presidential caucuses, the loss of their first-in-the-nation caucuses in the Democratic primary schedule, and multiple losses to Republicans at the ballot box.

In February, the Democratic National Committee approved President Joe Biden's recommendation to elevate South Carolina ahead of Iowa in the party's nominating calendar next year, dethroning the Hawkeye State's coveted perch during the primary season. Combined with the losses during the 2022 midterm elections, in which the GOP claimed all four of Iowa's congressional seats, Iowa Democrats are in a tough spot as they look to the future.

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“There’s no question that Democrats are at a low point in Iowa,” former Rep. Dave Loebsack, who retired from Congress in 2020, told the New York Times. Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks flipped his seat, defeating Rita Hart, a Democrat, by six votes. “It’s difficult even to recruit people to run when we’re so far down.”

In 2018, Democrats held three of Iowa's four congressional seats and three of the six statewide offices, and in 2020, former President Donald Trump won the state by roughly 8 percentage points over Biden. But a sign of just how badly Democrats are now performing came in 2022. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) cruised to victory during last year's elections, Republicans gained supermajority control in both chambers of the statehouse, and two of the three statewide elected Democrats lost their seats.

Now Iowa Democrats said it's hard to find candidates to run for seats that remain winnable. Hart, who lost to Miller-Meeks, is now the chairwoman of the state's Democratic Party. She told the New York Times that in order to reestablish power in the Hawkeye State, the party will need to focus on local issues.

“The way the media has changed, the way people have gotten their information, we have not shifted to understanding that we’ve got to talk to our fellow Iowans,” Hart said. “I’m very convinced that we’ve got to empower our county parties to do just that.”

Trump has successfully appealed to Iowa's white, rural voters, an influential bloc of voters in the state, while Democrats have struggled with weak messaging. Yet the loss of their first-place status in the Democratic nominating schedule after the bungled 2020 caucuses was a stinging devastation for the state party that called for a reckoning.

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Namely, Iowa Democrats are focusing on recruiting centrist politicians who can appeal to independent voters. “I’m hopeful that now our attention is on getting people elected and getting Democrats to turn out the vote rather than a national entity that overtakes everything,” state Rep. J.D. Scholten (D-IA) said.

But with a popular governor and a dominant state GOP, Iowa Democrats face an uphill climb to regaining power.