Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ own quest for the White House might view his trip to Iowa Monday on behalf of his former rival as a return to the scene of the initial crime.
Eight months ago, Hillary Clinton narrowly edged out Sanders in the Iowa Democratic Caucuses by just two-tenths of a percent. It was the first contest in a long and at times heated battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
It was also a fight that many of Sanders’ more passionate supporters have had trouble putting behind them.
But Sanders, after campaigning with Clinton in New Hampshire earlier this week, will champion her in three of their old battlegrounds: Davenport, Iowa City and Des Moines.
The independent senator from Vermont is one of Clinton’s top surrogates. His chief goal is to reach out to young voters who saw his campaign as a crusade against the political status quo. Young voters have always been a key Democratic constituency, but Clinton is having trouble energizing them.
Sanders told MSNBC earlier this week that electing Republican nominee Donald Trump “would be a disaster for this country.”
“I am going to do everything that I can to see that that does not happen,” he said. “When I campaign, I campaign very, very hard.”
Iowa has six electoral votes and has gone Democratic in six out of the last seven presidential elections. The last two were victories by President Barack Obama. With little more than a month to go in this year’s contest, Trump leads Clinton by five percentage points in a four-way race with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, according to average of polls on the Real Clear Politics website.
Anne Holton, wife Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Clinton’s running mate, was in Iowa Friday for the second day that voters are allowed to cast presidential ballots before Nov. 8. Iowa is one of 37 states, plus the District of Columbia, which allow some form of early voting.
That Trump is ahead in Iowa says a lot about the changing loyalties and demographics in the state, his knack for tapping into the political zeitgeist and his ability to dodge the fallout from comments that might generally be seen as damaging. Indeed, the GOP nominee insulted Iowa voters during the primaries with one of his trademark attacks: “How stupid are the people of Iowa,” he said when the popularity of rival-turned-ally Ben Carson was on the rise.
Yet he’s ahead.
That could be because key elements of his support are present in Iowa. It’s the seventh whitest state in the country, according to the U.S. Census, and ranks in the lower half of states, based on the number of people with college degrees.
It’s also a state that Trump might need more than Clinton because various estimates give her more paths to reaching the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House than him
But Dennis Goldford, a longtime observer of Iowa politics who teaches at Drake University in Des Moines, said more forces might be at work that favor Trump than just demographics. He said it’s worth noting that Obama carried the state by comfortable margins in both 2008 and 2012.
“You had a bunch of people who really hoped for the change Obama promised and were disappointed it didn’t really come and I wonder if they’re looking to Trump?” Goldford said. “It’s too easy demographically to say that Iowa has a high proportion of working class. If that were the case, Obama’s victory should have been a lot tougher.”
David Goldstein: 202-383-6105, @GoldsteinDavidJ