

Polls of voters on Election Day, conducted by Edison Research, indicated that men favored Ms. Tens of millions of dollars were spent trying to influence voters in this race. Braley described her as a tool of the wealthy, conservative Koch brothers and said her views on abortion and other issues were extreme. She campaigned as a “mother, soldier and independent leader” who would cut federal spending.
2014 NYTIMES ELECTION HOW TO
So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork.” Ernst attracted national attention last spring with a television commercial in which she declared: “I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm. Grassley could become chairman of the Judiciary Committee if Republicans won control of the Senate.

Grassley, one of the state’s most popular politicians, as just a “farmer from Iowa who never went to law school,” and he warned that Mr. Speaking to lawyers at a fund-raiser in Texas in July, he disparaged Senator Charles E.
2014 NYTIMES ELECTION SERIES
Braley was widely seen as the front-runner, but he frittered away his advantage with a series of missteps. Ernst will be Iowa’s first female United States senator and the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate. Richmond wins re-election to the House.State Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican, defeated Representative Bruce Braley, a Democrat, and will take the seat being vacated after 30 years by Senator Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat and longtime ally of organized labor. Koch, as well as from environmentalist groups. We at The Upshot created Leo, a statistical model that combines polling, fund-raising data and other variables to forecast.

Graves, who raised more money than anyone else in the race and attracted support from the political network overseen by the billionaire brothers Charles G. Control of the Senate is up for grabs in this year’s midterm elections. Paul Dietzel, a 28-year-old Republican who won the support of the Tea Party Express political action committee, siphoned off votes from Mr. Edwards served eight years in federal prison on corruption charges and briefly starred in a reality television series. Representative Bill Cassidy was the Republican incumbent, but he dropped out of the race to run for the Senate, leaving a free-for-all that attracted 12 candidates. Edwards, the 87-year-old former Democratic governor, and the Republican Garret Graves, the former head of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, will face each other in a runoff in the Sixth Congressional District, a conservative southeastern area that includes the state’s capital, Baton Rouge.

The spoiler turned out to be Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel who drew support from Tea Party supporters who felt Mr. 6 no candidate in the race was able to capture at least 50 percent of the vote as state law requires. Landrieu, the Democratic incumbent, and her Republican challenger, Representative Bill Cassidy, will face off in a runoff election scheduled for Dec.
