Down to the final hour before Iowans make the first voter choices of the 2016 presidential race, the Republican and Democratic candidates Monday evening delivered their last-minute pitches for support in a very close caucus contest.
“I’m feeling so energized,” Hillary Clinton told supporters.
On the other side of the aisle, Donald Trump declared to a packed Iowa rally: “This is the day we take our country back.”
While the candidates were revving up their base in a bid to drive up tuout, they also sparred sharply into the final hours before the caucuses begin.
On the Republican side, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz delivered tough remarks at a pre-caucus rally in Marion, Iowa, where he urged supporters to engage everyone at the caucus sites – even Trump supporters “decked head-to-toe” in Trump gear.
In a dig at Trump’s campaign slogan, Cruz said no one candidate can make America great, and only the people can.
Cruz is trailing front-ruer Trump slightly in the polls, but hoping his campaign’s organizational prowess can help put him over the top. He’s seeing a late threat, though, from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio who has been climbing in the polls in recent days.
“We’ll see what it leads to tonight, but I’m pretty confident we’ll have a strong, strong showing,” Rubio told Fox News Monday evening.
Clinton, meanwhile, is trying to fend off Vermont Sen. Beie Sanders, who has energized caucus-goers and has narrowed Clinton’s once-wide lead in the state to just a few points.
In less than an hour, the Iowa process will begin as hundreds of thousands of caucus-goers from both parties are expected to gather at sites across the state, to cast their decision in one of the world’s most unique and interactive democratic traditions.
Unlike a primary, which operates like a typical election, the caucuses allow candidate representatives to try and persuade voters before ballots are final. The process on the Democratic side is more interactive than the Republicans’.
Technically at stake are 30 Republican delegates and 44 Democratic delegates.
But even more important than the delegate count is the momentum a candidate – especially a surprise wier – can get out of a victory.
On the Democratic side, Sanders has fought to close a nearly 30-point polling gap this past summer, and has since drawn the race to a dead heat in Iowa.
With Sanders leading comfortably in the polls in the next-up contest in New Hampshire, the pressure is heavy on Clinton to secure an Iowa win.
“If Sanders wins, he goes 2 and 0 in the first two contests. That puts Clinton in a tough spot. But if she wins tonight, it gives her a shot at New Hampshire,” Democratic strategist Mary Ae Marsh said.
On the Republican side, Cruz has risen from the middle of the pack last year to essentially a co-leader in the state alongside Trump, though his numbers have dipped in recent days.
A win for Trump could help cement his status as the race’s front-ruer and would only strengthen his position going into contests like New Hampshire where he already leads.
But a win for Cruz or anyone else could jolt the GOP race, where candidates have struggled for months to arrest Trump’s rise.
The Iowa caucuses have had a mixed record in recent cycles, particularly on the Republican side, in picking the eventual nominees.
The GOP caucus wiers in 2008 and 2012 were former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pesylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, respectively, neither of whom won the nomination. Both also are struggling in their presidential bids this year.
Eight years ago, though, then-Sen. Barack Obama’s Iowa win in the Democratic race helped set him on the trajectory to claim his party’s nomination and, then, the presidency.