Real estate mogul Donald Trump and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton each spoke with cautious optimism Monday morning as the first nominating contest of the 2016 election approached here in Iowa, finding common ground on one unified message: get out and vote.
“You have to be a little bit nervous, and you know I like to win,” Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show on Monday morning. “This is actually my first election night. I’ve gone through many election nights but it was always for somebody else.”
“This is a little bit different for me,” he added.
With a massive winter storm looming for the Hawkeye State Monday night, the campaigns in both parties have closely monitored weather conditions to estimate how voter turnout might be affected. The two front runners and their rivals are counting on their supporters to push them over the edge in Monday evening’s caucuses, which will come just hours before a massive winter storm is expected to descend on the state.
“We’ve got such a great campaign organization, we’ve got thousands of volunteers, we knocked on 125,000 doors this weekend. There’s just so much excitement,” Clinton said NBC’s “Today” Monday morning. “We hope that even though it’s a tight race, a lot of the people who are committed to caucusing for me will be there and standing up for me. And I will do the same for them in the campaign and in the presidency.”
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) said during an interview Monday that he expects to see record turnout. The longtime governor pointed to the energy surrounding Trump in particular, comparing the excitement to that roused by President Obama’s 2008 campaign. He said that Trump has “turned out bigger crowds than we’ve ever seen before” during an interview in Des Moines.
“I know everybody is saying, ‘Are they just coming for curiosity?’ But I think they’re for real, they’re committed and will show up for caucuses. I do,” Branstad said.” I’ve been pretty impressed with what they’ve done.
“Of course we saw this phenomenon eight years ago with Obama, it was beyond what anyone could have imagined, and I think Trump is a phenomenon, too,” he said.
On the Democratic side, partisans were watching to see how Clinton’s elaborate ground organization camp would perform given the massive crowds her main opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has attracted across the state.
Former Iowa senator Tom Harkin, a Clinton supporter, said in an interview Monday in Des Moines that the former secretary of state “has a tremendous organization, better than even Obama had.”
“We have 1,681 precincts in Iowa and Hillary has a precinct captain in each one. Obama only had about 1,200 of them covered,” he continued. “Yes, Sanders has a strong message and a strong persona, so the tide maybe went to him early on. But the tide has come back our way.”
