MANCHESTER, N.H. — The Democratic presidential candidates were crisscrossing New Hampshire on Monday, making a last-ditch pitch to voters one day before its critical first-in-the-nation primary and as President Donald Trump visited the Granite State to rally thousands from within eyeshot of the leading Democrats.
The Democrats were preparing for some of their biggest events of the race here Monday night — in some cases, their final call for local voters to rally to their side. The events were taking place as the Iowa caucus totals, which had both former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., claiming victory, were being contested.
Entering election day here, Sanders held a more than 7-point lead over Buttigieg in the RealClearPolitics average of several polls. Following them is a more distant battle for third place among a surging Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
As the Democrats campaigned across the state, Trump fired his opening salvo ahead of a Manchester rally later in the evening, where a long line of supporters waited for hours for the gates to open.
“Will be in Manchester, New Hampshire, tonight for a big Rally,” Trump tweeted. “Want to shake up the Dems a little bit — they have a really boring deal going on.”
The president’s presence in the state ahead of the vote drew attention from the candidates.
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“Folks, you know, you might have heard Trump is coming to New Hampshire today,” Biden told an audience in Gilford. “I can hardly wait. You know, in Iowa before the caucuses, he sent a plane full of surrogates, I think they said 60 or 80, I can’t remember how much. This time, he’s coming in person. He’s coming in person. You know, that’s how interested he is in the Democratic primary, I guess. He’s had an overwhelming interest in the Democratic primary.”
Biden pointed to Trump’s economic argument, saying the economy is “beginning to slow” and that the president “is rapidly, rapidly, rapidly squandering the opportunity he had … given to him by our administration” because of his “reckless and irresponsible policies.”
Speaking to supporters in Rindge, Sanders said Tuesday marks what “could begin the end of Donald Trump.”
“If we win here in New Hampshire after winning in Iowa, I think we got a great chance to win in Nevada and I think we have a strong shot in South Carolina and California and the states that follow,” Sanders said. “So, if we win here tomorrow, I think we got a path to victory for the Democratic nomination.”
Some of Sanders’ Demoratic rivals have taken to critiquing his platform of “democratic socialism” in the days ahead of New Hampshire’s vote, though the contenders have been much sharper in their criticism of Buttigieg, whether it be for accepting donations from billionaires or his relative inexperience compared to the field.
Buttigieg has pushed back, saying his lack of Washington experience is a strength, while exhorting Democrats to be welcoming to all, including the ultra-wealthy, because they will be needed to defeat Trump in the fall.
In Plymouth, he took aim at Sanders, saying he would not unify the country and that “a picture where your only choices are between a revolution or the status quo is a picture where most of us don’t see ourselves.”
At a campaign event in Nashua, Klobuchar pointed to her “surging” in the polls since Friday’s nearby debate, saying she believes “a lot of this has to do with this simple idea that I know you share and that is that America is a country [de] Tocqueville once said, that may not be the most enlightened nation, but America is a country that always finds a way to repair its faults and to make itself better.”
Klobuchar’s surge has coincided with dips in the polls for Biden and Warren. Nationally, a new poll showed that Biden’s dip is taking effect outside of Iowa, where he finished an underwhelming fourth behind Sanders, Buttigieg and Warren, and in New Hampshire, where he looks to be duking it out in a battle for third.
That Quinnipiac University survey showed Sanders leading the field at 25 percent with Biden, Warren and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — who is bypassing the early states — locked in a tight battle for second.
On MSNBC, Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, said he was not conceding New Hampshire. But, she added, his campaign believes the primary “should not and frankly will not be decided by simply, after simply Iowa or New Hampshire.”
As the big vote nears, Rep. Ann Kuster, D-N.H. and a top Buttigieg backer, said she’s “never” seen so many voters undecided this close to ballots being cast.
“My first presidential, I was 16 years old,” she said, adding that she was a delegate for 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and worked on former President Barack Obama’s campaign. “I have never seen the undecideds this high this late in the game.”
