Iowa · 2012 presidential election
Iowa presidential election results 2012
Barack Obama carried Iowa by 5.81 points (91,927 votes), winning 6 electoral votes.
- Electoral votes
- 6
- Votes counted
- 1,582,180
- IA result
- D+5.8
- Compared with the nation
- 1.9 pts more Democratic
- Swing since 2008
- 3.7 pts to R
Statewide result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share | Bar | Electoral votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barack Obama | Democratic | 822,544 | 52.00% | 6 | |
| Mitt Romney | Republican | 730,617 | 46.20% | — | |
| Total votes | 1,582,180 | ||||
Certified state documentCertified
Every ticket on the ballot, as printed in the certified document (the statewide table above groups minor candidates as “Others” when the source does).
All 8 tickets as printed in the document
| Ticket (as printed) | Code | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barack Obama/Joe Biden | — | 822,544 | 52.23% |
| Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan | — | 730,617 | 46.40% |
| Gary Johnson/James P. Gray | — | 12,926 | 0.82% |
| Jill Stein/Cheri Honkala | — | 3,769 | 0.24% |
| Virgil Goode/James Clymer | — | 3,038 | 0.19% |
| Jerry Litzel/Jim Litzel | — | 1,027 | 0.07% |
| James Harris/Alyson Kennedy | — | 445 | 0.03% |
| Gloria LaRiva/Stefanie Beacham | — | 372 | 0.02% |
| Write-in / scattering | 7,442 | ||
Notes on how this document was read
- The page's left menu (x < 150 pt) is ignored.
Method: text layer: words grouped by baseline (pdfplumber), numeric tokens taken as the row's values under the spec's column labels; each row's digits matched against PyMuPDF's words (second extraction)
County resultsMIT Election Lab
Download CSV| County | Barack Obama | Mitt Romney | Others | Total | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adair | 1,790 | 2,114 | 92 | 3,996 | 8.1 |
| Adams | 1,028 | 1,108 | 49 | 2,185 | 3.7 |
| Allamakee | 3,553 | 3,264 | 117 | 6,934 | 4.2 |
| Appanoose | 2,951 | 3,161 | 133 | 6,245 | 3.4 |
| Audubon | 1,611 | 1,802 | 44 | 3,457 | 5.5 |
| Benton | 6,862 | 6,940 | 221 | 14,023 | 0.6 |
| Black Hawk | 39,821 | 26,235 | 1,085 | 67,141 | 20.2 |
| Boone | 7,512 | 6,556 | 320 | 14,388 | 6.6 |
| Bremer | 6,763 | 6,405 | 178 | 13,346 | 2.7 |
| Buchanan | 5,911 | 4,450 | 174 | 10,535 | 13.9 |
| Buena Vista | 3,700 | 4,554 | 129 | 8,383 | 10.2 |
| Butler | 3,329 | 4,106 | 110 | 7,545 | 10.3 |
| Calhoun | 2,238 | 2,891 | 101 | 5,230 | 12.5 |
| Carroll | 4,947 | 5,601 | 126 | 10,674 | 6.1 |
| Cass | 2,858 | 4,217 | 130 | 7,205 | 18.9 |
| Cedar | 4,972 | 4,529 | 148 | 9,649 | 4.6 |
| Cerro Gordo | 13,316 | 10,128 | 380 | 23,824 | 13.4 |
| Cherokee | 2,634 | 3,662 | 119 | 6,415 | 16.0 |
| Chickasaw | 3,554 | 2,836 | 94 | 6,484 | 11.1 |
| Clarke | 2,189 | 2,124 | 117 | 4,430 | 1.5 |
| Clay | 3,385 | 4,951 | 166 | 8,502 | 18.4 |
| Clayton | 4,806 | 4,164 | 168 | 9,138 | 7.0 |
| Clinton | 15,141 | 9,432 | 427 | 25,000 | 22.8 |
| Crawford | 3,066 | 3,595 | 91 | 6,752 | 7.8 |
| Dallas | 16,576 | 20,988 | 552 | 38,116 | 11.6 |
| Davis | 1,520 | 2,138 | 115 | 3,773 | 16.4 |
| Decatur | 1,791 | 1,947 | 95 | 3,833 | 4.1 |
| Delaware | 4,616 | 4,636 | 126 | 9,378 | 0.2 |
| Des Moines | 11,888 | 8,136 | 361 | 20,385 | 18.4 |
| Dickinson | 4,095 | 5,912 | 152 | 10,159 | 17.9 |
| Dubuque | 28,768 | 21,280 | 846 | 50,894 | 14.7 |
| Emmet | 2,099 | 2,507 | 81 | 4,687 | 8.7 |
| Fayette | 5,732 | 4,492 | 142 | 10,366 | 12.0 |
| Floyd | 4,680 | 3,472 | 105 | 8,257 | 14.6 |
| Franklin | 2,266 | 2,823 | 97 | 5,186 | 10.7 |
| Fremont | 1,637 | 1,972 | 59 | 3,668 | 9.1 |
| Greene | 2,375 | 2,380 | 91 | 4,846 | 0.1 |
| Grundy | 2,635 | 4,215 | 112 | 6,962 | 22.7 |
| Guthrie | 2,569 | 3,171 | 148 | 5,888 | 10.2 |
| Hamilton | 3,782 | 3,991 | 154 | 7,927 | 2.6 |
| Hancock | 2,521 | 3,317 | 87 | 5,925 | 13.4 |
| Hardin | 4,075 | 4,670 | 153 | 8,898 | 6.7 |
| Harrison | 3,136 | 4,065 | 121 | 7,322 | 12.7 |
| Henry | 4,460 | 5,035 | 202 | 9,697 | 5.9 |
| Howard | 2,768 | 1,795 | 82 | 4,645 | 20.9 |
| Humboldt | 1,972 | 3,099 | 87 | 5,158 | 21.8 |
| Ida | 1,321 | 2,286 | 56 | 3,663 | 26.3 |
| Iowa | 4,144 | 4,569 | 153 | 8,866 | 4.8 |
| Jackson | 5,907 | 4,177 | 158 | 10,242 | 16.9 |
| Jasper | 10,257 | 8,877 | 381 | 19,515 | 7.1 |
| Jefferson | 4,798 | 3,436 | 296 | 8,530 | 16.0 |
| Johnson | 50,666 | 23,698 | 1,613 | 75,977 | 35.5 |
| Jones | 5,534 | 4,721 | 194 | 10,449 | 7.8 |
| Keokuk | 2,303 | 2,843 | 120 | 5,266 | 10.3 |
| Kossuth | 3,850 | 4,937 | 136 | 8,923 | 12.2 |
| Lee | 10,714 | 7,785 | 412 | 18,911 | 15.5 |
| Linn | 68,581 | 47,622 | 2,250 | 118,453 | 17.7 |
| Louisa | 2,452 | 2,420 | 96 | 4,968 | 0.6 |
| Lucas | 1,987 | 2,254 | 82 | 4,323 | 6.2 |
| Lyon | 1,423 | 4,978 | 108 | 6,509 | 54.6 |
| Madison | 3,630 | 4,638 | 190 | 8,458 | 11.9 |
| Mahaska | 4,213 | 6,448 | 222 | 10,883 | 20.5 |
| Marion | 7,507 | 9,828 | 352 | 17,687 | 13.1 |
| Marshall | 10,257 | 8,472 | 335 | 19,064 | 9.4 |
| Mills | 2,848 | 4,216 | 148 | 7,212 | 19.0 |
| Mitchell | 2,831 | 2,643 | 112 | 5,586 | 3.4 |
| Monona | 2,101 | 2,557 | 84 | 4,742 | 9.6 |
| Monroe | 1,731 | 2,026 | 73 | 3,830 | 7.7 |
| Montgomery | 1,922 | 3,001 | 102 | 5,025 | 21.5 |
| Muscatine | 11,323 | 8,168 | 374 | 19,865 | 15.9 |
| O'Brien | 1,969 | 5,266 | 106 | 7,341 | 44.9 |
| Osceola | 912 | 2,230 | 52 | 3,194 | 41.3 |
| Page | 2,613 | 4,348 | 118 | 7,079 | 24.5 |
| Palo Alto | 2,139 | 2,660 | 88 | 4,887 | 10.7 |
| Plymouth | 4,164 | 8,597 | 189 | 12,950 | 34.2 |
| Pocahontas | 1,523 | 2,396 | 113 | 4,032 | 21.7 |
| Polk | 128,465 | 96,096 | 4,321 | 228,882 | 14.1 |
| Pottawattamie | 19,644 | 21,860 | 797 | 42,301 | 5.2 |
| Poweshiek | 5,357 | 4,424 | 194 | 9,975 | 9.4 |
| Ringgold | 1,186 | 1,368 | 45 | 2,599 | 7.0 |
| Sac | 2,122 | 3,094 | 75 | 5,291 | 18.4 |
| Scott | 50,652 | 38,251 | 1,360 | 90,263 | 13.7 |
| Shelby | 2,469 | 3,911 | 103 | 6,483 | 22.2 |
| Sioux | 2,700 | 14,407 | 201 | 17,308 | 67.6 |
| Story | 26,192 | 19,668 | 1,290 | 47,150 | 13.8 |
| Tama | 4,768 | 4,098 | 151 | 9,017 | 7.4 |
| Taylor | 1,262 | 1,683 | 50 | 2,995 | 14.1 |
| Union | 3,043 | 2,813 | 101 | 5,957 | 3.9 |
| Van Buren | 1,402 | 2,064 | 103 | 3,569 | 18.5 |
| Wapello | 8,663 | 6,789 | 318 | 15,770 | 11.9 |
| Warren | 12,551 | 13,052 | 469 | 26,072 | 1.9 |
| Washington | 5,115 | 5,562 | 327 | 11,004 | 4.1 |
| Wayne | 1,251 | 1,583 | 66 | 2,900 | 11.4 |
| Webster | 9,537 | 8,469 | 286 | 18,292 | 5.8 |
| Winnebago | 2,903 | 2,906 | 109 | 5,918 | 0.1 |
| Winneshiek | 6,256 | 4,622 | 206 | 11,084 | 14.7 |
| Woodbury | 22,302 | 21,841 | 876 | 45,019 | 1.0 |
| Worth | 2,350 | 1,744 | 78 | 4,172 | 14.5 |
| Wright | 2,836 | 3,349 | 93 | 6,278 | 8.2 |
Candidate votes as printed in the document. “Total” is the document’s total where it prints one, otherwise the sum of the candidate columns. Margin is the leading ticket’s lead in points over the second.
Notes on how this document was read
- Secondary source: MIT Election Data and Science Lab, County Presidential Election Returns 2000-2016 (compiled from official state election records).
Method: Machine-readable dataset; county sums checked against the state totals in The American Presidency Project summary (within 0.5% for both main tickets).
Iowa in every election · 2012 primaries · All states in 2012 · Report an error
Questions and answers
Who won Iowa in 2012?
Barack Obama won Iowa by 5.81 percentage points (91,927 votes).
How many electoral votes did Iowa have in 2012?
Iowa cast 6 electoral votes in 2012.
How many people voted for president in Iowa in 2012?
1,582,180 votes were counted for president.
How many counties did each candidate win in Iowa in 2012?
Mitt Romney 61, Barack Obama 38 (out of 99 counties with results).
How did Iowa change from 2008 to 2012?
The margin moved 3.7 points toward the Republican ticket, from Democratic by 9.5 points to Democratic by 5.8 points.
Official results As published by The American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara) and the state documents it links. How we use this data