Iowa held a debate this week, and it is the only race here where that is the organising fact. Both candidates read slightly negative at home and clearly positive nationally, and the debate day carried 27K posts, more than three times any other day on this page.
TOTAL VOLUMEPosts, articles and comments across all geographies. Only 9% of the U.S. portion is original writing; the rest is reposts and replies.
+7.6
HINSON, NATIONALNet sentiment outside Iowa. +26.8 on posts naming them alone.
+22.7
TUREK, NATIONALNet sentiment outside Iowa. +37.3 on posts naming them alone.
27K
BIGGEST DAYThe first Iowa Senate debate was held on Wednesday evening and the coverage landed on Thursday, producing 27K posts, the heaviest single day on this page by a wide margin.
What The Polls Say
Published polling, shown to set context. A poll asks a sample of voters which candidate they intend to support. Everything else on this page measures something different: the balance of positive and negative labeled posts about each candidate in the captured conversation. A candidate can lead the vote and still take the worse of the argument online, and where the two diverge this page explains the conversation, not the electorate.
Siena College · field date Oct 3, 2026 · 606 LV · margin of error 4.6 points
The two measures agree, narrowly and in opposite-looking ways. Turek takes the better of the Iowa conversation by 2.4 points of net sentiment and leads the five-poll average by 1.6. The most recent poll has Hinson ahead 48 to 47, inside its own margin of error of 4.6 points, so the average and the newest survey disagree about who is in front.
The Week In One Line
Net sentiment runs on the left axis from −100 to +100. Gold bars carry total daily
volume for both candidates combined; hover any bar for the narratives driving that day. Turek's line stays above Hinson's on six of seven days. The debate on Wednesday lifts both to their joint peak, and the volume spike lands the day after, when the clips circulate.
Hinson net sentimentTurek net sentimentTotal posts, articles and comments
Inside Iowa
Both figures cover posts that resolve to Iowa. Net sentiment runs from -100 to +100 and counts only posts a classifier labeled, about a third of the total. The in-state base is modest at 31 and 41 stored documents.
IOWA
Hinson
Iowa
1,360posts
140 positive
170 negative
Hover a segment
618 unique authors · 150 original posts
(11% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 310 labeled posts, 22.8% of this slice; stored sample behind the labels 31 documents.
Top 3 narratives driving sentiment
1
Five Votes On Tariffs
NEGATIVE DRIVER
The sharpest in-state case against Hinson is agricultural and specific. Turek's campaign spent the week putting her tariff votes next to farmers who supported Trump, which is a harder argument to dismiss than a party-line one.
Marcus farms corn and soybeans in Colfax, and he voted for Trump. Iowa farmers like him are struggling because of Ashley Hinson's five votes for the tariffs.
Hinson's supporters treated the debate as a decisive win, and the language they used was emphatic enough to travel on its own. It is the clearest positive moment she gets in state all week.
Ashley Hinson didn't just debate Josh Turek. She exposed him in front of the entire state.
Her campaign's message in state is ideological placement rather than record. The phrase too liberal for Iowa is repeated across her own posts and her party's, with specific votes attached.
Josh Turek is too liberal for Iowa. He voted to use your tax dollars to give welfare benefits to illegal immigrants.
475 unique authors · 150 original posts
(14% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 410 labeled posts, 38.7% of this slice; stored sample behind the labels 41 documents.
Top 3 narratives driving sentiment
1
Fifty-Eight Percent
NEGATIVE DRIVER
The organised in-state case against Turek is his attendance record in the Iowa legislature, pressed hardest at the debate alongside a demand that he refund per diem payments. It is the most repeated number on this page.
Turek missed more than 50% of his votes, including the state farm bill to help Iowa's farmers.
A distinct in-state thread is Iowans remarking on the advertising itself. The repetition of one phrase across every spot became its own subject, and the people pointing it out are not persuaded by it.
Every commercial is either radical liberal Josh Turek or radical liberal Rob Sand. It's literally just copy and paste nonsense.
His own in-state message is economic and local: tariffs raising input costs, and healthcare deserts across rural Iowa. It is quieter than the attacks on him and produces less volume.
Josh Turek talks about healthcare deserts across Iowa and the challenges communities face with cancer, radon, water quality, education and access to care.
The same week reads differently depending on where you stand. Net sentiment is plotted
from Iowa on the left to the rest of the country on the right; the solid line counts every post
naming a candidate, the dashed line counts only posts that name that candidate and not the other.
All posts naming the candidate
Posts naming that candidate only
-17.3Ashley HinsonIowa minus national · -26.8 on single-subject posts
Hinson reads 17.3 points worse in Iowa than nationally, and the single-subject test widens that to 26.8. Both tests agree on direction, so this is a stable reading: the national audience meets her through a favourable poll, and Iowa meets her through tariff votes.
-30.1Josh TurekIowa minus national · -57.3 on single-subject posts
Turek shows the same sign and a much wider gap, 30.1 points joint and 57.3 on single-subject posts, the largest on this page. He is a national story about tariffs and rural America, and an Iowa story about missed votes.
What each audience actually argues about
Geography, not party. Both columns cover the same week and the same two candidates; what separates them is which arguments actually travel.
IN IOWA
Iowa Argues About Attendance And Tariffs
In-state posts are about records. Turek's legislative attendance and per diem payments on one side, Hinson's tariff votes and a housing tax credit on the other. Both arguments are specific, and both are about money.
Fifty-eight percentTurek's attendance figure, the most repeated number here.
Five votes for the tariffsPut next to farmers who voted for Trump.
Copy and pasteHow Iowans describe the advertising they are watching.
REST OF THE U.S.
The Country Argues About Rural America
National posts are about what Iowa represents. Tariffs and rural decline carry Turek's national figure; a favourable poll carries Hinson's. Neither candidate's legislative record gets much attention outside the state.
Decimated rural communitiesTurek's phrase, and his widest-travelling line.
Ahead by twoThe poll that circulated without the average beside it.
A 99 percent recordThe attendance contrast, carried by national accounts.
Both columns spent Thursday on the same debate. Iowa argued about who won it; the rest of the country used it to decide whether the seat is in play. It is the only event this week that both audiences treated as significant.
The Rest Of The Country
The same two candidates over the same seven days, measured across every state except Iowa, where both read far better.
NATIONAL
Hinson
Rest of United States
25,240posts
3,919 positive
3,367 negative
Hover a segment
14,196 unique authors · 2,026 original posts
(8% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 7,286 labeled posts, 28.9% of this slice; stored sample behind the labels 1,314 documents.
Top 3 narratives driving sentiment
1
Ahead, And Said So Often
POSITIVE DRIVER
Hinson's positive national figure rests heavily on polling. A survey released during the week put her two points up, and the result circulated widely outside Iowa, usually without the average that contradicts it.
Iowa Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson leads Democrat Josh Turek by 2 percentage points, according to a new poll.
The second national thread is her charge that Turek missed votes in the state legislature. It is carried mostly by national party accounts rather than Iowa ones, and it is the attack with the widest reach outside the state.
Hinson has a 99% voting record in Congress, while Turek showed up for only 58% of votes in the state legislature.
The negative national material is a conflict-of-interest story: a housing tax credit she backed, and her husband's company benefiting from it. It surfaced late in the week and had not yet acquired much volume.
Ashley Hinson backed a tax credit, then her husband's company cashed in. She pushed a housing tax credit in Iowa and her husband's company landed the benefit.
11,495 unique authors · 1,886 original posts
(9% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 7,776 labeled posts, 36.3% of this slice; stored sample behind the labels 1,347 documents.
Top 3 narratives driving sentiment
1
The Debate, Read Nationally
POSITIVE DRIVER
Turek's +22.7 nationally is built on the debate and the coverage that followed it rather than on Iowa events. His argument that tariffs have raised costs for rural communities is the line that travelled, and it reached audiences with no prior view of him.
Turek and Hinson spoke about their legislative track records at the US Senate debate.
He also benefits from national framing he had no part in. Coverage of Republicans distancing themselves from the president placed Iowa among the races where that was happening.
With less than a month until Election Day, Republicans are fleeing Trump while Obama remains the Democrats' midterms star.
The negative national material is the debate exchange over $20,000 in taxpayer-funded per diem payments. It is the one in-state charge against him that acquired a national audience.
Hinson criticized Turek for taking taxpayer-funded per diem payments and demanded he refund $20,000.
This page is the product of two different kinds of work. One half is data that no public API makes available; the other half is judgment about what the data does and does not support.
What Quid made possible
None of the following could be assembled from public endpoints inside a week.
58K posts split by geographyOne week, separated into an Iowa half and a rest-of-country half on the same days.
A debate day isolated from the week around itThursday carries 27K of the 58K. Per-day retrieval keeps the other six days readable.
Sentiment aimed at the personEach candidate is defined once, centrally, with primary-term targeting.
2,733 stored documents behind the labelsEnough in all four cells to characterize the argument rather than guess at it.
What Claude was responsible for
The data does not interpret itself, and it arrives with traps in it.
Reporting the poll that disagrees with the averageA survey putting Hinson two points up circulated widely. The published average has Turek ahead. The panel shows both rather than the convenient one.
Naming the overlap45% of Turek's posts also name Hinson. The single-subject column is presented as the better guide rather than a footnote.
Not treating a 27K day as a verdictVolume measures attention, not approval. Both candidates peaked that day.
Leaving the classifier visibleAttack posts are frequently labelled positive toward their target. The caveats say so.
Neither half can establish cause. This page measures what was said, how much of it there was, and who said it. It is not a poll, it does not model turnout, and it does not predict the November result.
How to read this
Source. Quid. Each person is defined once, centrally, by a stored definition that uses
primary: sentiment targeting, so the sentiment is scored toward that named figure rather
than toward the post as a whole. Every figure on this page reads that same definition.
Window. Oct 5 - Oct 11, 2026, seven complete day buckets. Quid closes its day at 23:00 UTC and
ignores the timezone parameter, so each bucket covers roughly 23 hours of the labeled calendar day.
Net sentiment is (positive − negative) / (positive + negative) × 100, computed on
labeled posts only. Neutral posts are excluded from the meter but counted in the volume figures.
Sentiment coverage. Sentiment labels cover 23 to 29% of Hinson's posts and 39 to 36% of Turek's.
The national slices are sound at 1,314 and 1,347 stored documents. The in-state slices are thinner, at 31 for Hinson and 41 for Turek, which is comfortably above the floor but worth holding in mind when reading a single-digit net figure.
Classifier attribution is imperfect. In a two-candidate race most posts name both people, and
the classifier sometimes assigns a post's sentiment to the wrong subject, and several posts attacking one
candidate are labeled positive for them. Every soundbite shown here was read and placed against the narrative
it actually supports, but the donut and meter totals are the classifier's unedited output.
Twitter/X counts are projected ×10 from a 10% sample, so volume figures exceed the number of
individually stored documents. Counts and samples are never mixed inside one ratio.
Sensitivity test. 32% of Hinson's posts and 45% of Turek's name both candidates, where the classifier can credit sentiment to the wrong one. Re-running every figure on posts that name one
candidate only widens the national gap for both and flattens Hinson at home. Her Iowa figure moves from -9.7 to exactly 0.0 and her national figure from +7.6 to +26.8; Turek's Iowa figure falls from -7.3 to -20.0 while his national rises to +37.3. With 45 percent of Turek's posts naming both candidates, the joint figures here are substantially a measure of the advertising war rather than of either candidate alone.
Volume is amplification, not voices. Only 9% of posts are original; the rest are reposts and replies. Unique-author counts
are shown on every panel and are the better measure of how many people are actually talking.
Link integrity. Every source link on this page was checked for liveness at publication.
Exploratory. Figures may not match Quid's own dashboards exactly. Sentiment is a
measure of how people are talking, not a poll, and nothing here projects a November result.
