How the Iowa State Fair Became a Must-Visit Political Campaign Stop

The August before each presidential election year, candidates for the nation’s highest office make a pilgrimage to Des Moines to pay tribute to a life-size cow made of butter. At the Iowa State Fair, incumbent presidents and little-known candidates are equally beholden to the 600-pound low-moisture, pure cream Iowa butter bovine.

Yet, local political scientists say the politicos are secondary to the rest of the fair’s primary attractions, which include livestock competitions, concerts, carnival rides and dozens of vendors selling food on a stick. Rattlesnake corn dogs are in front of the grandstand in 2026.

“I can’t tell you what percentage of fairgoers actually connect with a candidate, but if that were 50 percent, I’d be shocked,” says Dennis Goldford, a retired political science professor at Drake University.

The Iowa State Fair doesn’t need politicians; politicians need the Iowa State Fair.

The butter cow, the fried food on sticks and the crowds of sweltering Iowans form the ideal backdrop for highfalutin and humble presidential hopefuls alike to engage in retail politics with real Americans—their emphasis.

“[Politicians] may do things like throw some feed into a pig pen just to show, ‘Hey look, I’m just a regular person like you,’” Goldford says.

And with the soapbox speeches televised and posted to social media, the fair provides voters all over the country with a first impression of the upcoming year’s candidates, who historically have returned to Iowa the following February for the Iowa caucuses.

But the fair, which began in 1854, hasn’t always been a necessary early stop on the presidential campaign trail. The transformation began about 50 years ago, when a peanut farmer from Georgia took a page out of George McGovern’s playbook.

Senator McGovern of South Dakota was running against stiff competition ahead of the 1972 Democratic Party presidential primary season. The frontrunner was Edmund Muskie, a senator from Maine who unsuccessfully ran for vice president on Hubert Humphrey’s ticket in 1968.

In previous election contests, New Hampshire, where Muskie was polling well, had been the first primary state. But because of the disastrous 1968 Democratic Convention, where anti-war protestors clashed with police in televised exchanges broadcast around the world, the party leaned into caucuses to democratize the nomination process by moving it away from party bosses.

Iowa’s caucuses include four levels of meetings, from precinct to state convention, and this complexity meant the process had to start early. The fact that Iowa’s nomination process is a series of caucuses rather than a primary also helped the state avoid running afoul of New Hampshire’s state law, which positioned the “Live Free or Die” state to always hold the first primary.

At the 1972 Iowa caucuses, Muskie finished second to “uncommitted,” but McGovern finished third to Muskie. This early momentum was credited when McGovern eventually won his party’s nomination.

Jimmy Carter was finishing his stint as Georgia governor with his sights firmly set on the presidency when he announced his candidacy in December 1974. After observing the 1972 primary, Carter decided he would campaign heavily in Iowa. “Jimmy Carter noticed, and his people noticed,” the impact of Iowa caucuses on the previous presidential race, Goldford says. “He camped out in Iowa for a year. He stayed in the homes of supporters.”

Carter attended the Iowa State Fair in 1975, according to Des Moines local politician Mike Mauro who served as Carter’s driver. The following year, Carter addressed a crowd of farmers there and promised to end grain embargoes.

Carter’s shoe-string budget campaign in Iowa proved fruitful when he won his party’s nomination then the presidency in 1976. The win is credited with putting the Iowa caucuses on the map as must-attend events for presidential hopefuls. The Republican Party also decided to move Iowa to the front of its primary calendar in 1976. Additionally, Carter’s election elevated the Iowa State Fair as an important precursor to the caucuses.

Since the 1976 presidential election cycle, the Iowa State Fair has routinely hosted candidates for state and federal elections. Many are photographed consuming a seemingly obligatory dish on a stick and speaking to fellow attendees. In 2002, the Des Moines Register even launched its Political Soapbox, a centralized stage and seating area where candidates may speak for 20 minutes to anyone who will listen. Some addresses have been smoother than others.

In 2011, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, then a private equity titan from Utah and former Massachusetts governor, responded to suggestions that corporations pay more taxes with, “corporations are people, my friend.”

“I didn’t think twice [about that],” says University of Iowa political science associate professor Timothy Hagle, who is also a lawyer. “In the law, we’re talking about corporations can be treated as people for purposes of being sued, but boy did that create a firestorm.”

Incumbent President Barack Obama and his campaign exploited the gaffe by arguing Romney was out of touch with average Americans.

The following presidential election cycle, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton made an effort to appear more approachable at the fair after losing Iowa to Obama in 2012, but it was Donald Trump’s helicopter entrance that stole headlines. The outsider candidate landed just outside the fairgrounds and offered free rides to children.

“All candidates have the same opponent [at the state fair], and that opponent’s name is, ‘expected,’” Goldford says. “Did you do better than expected or worse?”

Today, more than 1 million people attend the Iowa State Fair each year. Whether it will remain a key stop on presidential campaigns is up for debate.

In July 2026, a subcommittee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted to strip Iowa of its first-in-the-nation spot, instead elevating South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia to an “early window” on the party’s 2028 nominating calendar. The 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucuses had faced technical difficulties and late precinct reporting, but the DNC’s announcement highlighted the six states as “key battleground[s]” that can offer “a comprehensive test with diverse groups of voters.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are sticking with Iowa, and using the Democrats’ abandonment of the state to their advantage.

If fewer national politicians visit the Iowa State Fair in coming election cycles, will fairgoers mind? Likely not.

“If the weather’s good, you certainly could have 100,000 people at the fair,” Goldford says. “It’s not as though tens of thousands of people are sitting somewhere with bated breath waiting to see a candidate.”