COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – Among Republicans, we have the showman, the ideologue and the next-generation man. Among Democrats: the avowed socialist who wants a democratic “revolution” and the avowed progressive/realist who says she wants to make actual “progress.”
These five, and many more in the mix, submit themselves to Monday to the judgment of voters in Iowa, the farm state that gets everything trudging in the grinding process to pick the next president.
Iowa’s magnetic hold on the 2016 hopefuls is in its final moments as more candidates prepare to flee for next-up New Hampshire, another small state with an outsized influence in shaping who’s best positioned for the delegate-rich primaries to come.
Donald Trump is hanging out in Iowa for now, possibly for a Monday night party if he wins. Then it’s off to New Hampshire to press what the polls say is his advantage in that state. Ohio Gov. John Kasich bailed from Iowa earlier, long seeing more promise for his longshot campaign back East.
According to late polls, the Republicans to watch most in the Iowa caucuses are the flamboyant Trump, the hard-driving conservative Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, 2016’s youngest candidate at age 44 (though only five months younger than Cruz). Cruz, a Texas senator, has carefully cultivated his get-out-the-vote effort; Trump’s is a question mark.