In this phase, the Ninth District included Hamilton, Story, Boone, Webster, Humboldt, Kossuth, Emmet, Palo Alto, Pocahontas, Calhoun, Greene, Carroll, Sac, Buena Vista, Clay, Dickinson, Osceola, O'Brien, Cherokee, Ida, Crawford, Monona, Woodbury, Plymouth, Sioux, and Lyon counties.
The 1880 census caused Iowa to receive two more seats in the House, requiring reapportionment of the state into eleven districts.
[1] It included Council Bluffs in Pottawattamie County, across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska and the historical starting point of the transcontinental railroad.
Voters elected Democrat William Henry Mills Pusey, then replaced him with Republican Joseph Lyman, both of Council Bluffs.
The Iowa General Assembly soon readjusted the boundaries of the eleven-district map, allegedly to increase the number of Republican victories.
[6] The first election under the nine-district plan, in 1932, coincided with the Franklin D. Roosevelt landslide, causing a northwestern Iowa Democrat (Guy M. Gillette of Cherokee County) to win a congressional race for only the second time ever.