Obama and Bernie Sanders to meet at White House on Wednesday

“I’m so excited to change the world”, said Selina Vickers, a social worker who drove 11 hours from Fayette County, West Virginia, to help with the get-out-the-vote effort.

In Iowa, Sanders and Clinton are locked in a statistical dead heat, with Clinton earning 45 percent support of likely caucus-goers compared with 42 percent for Sanders, according to a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg politics.

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign on Saturday stood by a book endorsement the Vermont senator wrote that suggested President Barack Obama had let progressives down, claiming that what the senator wrote is “absolutely true”. And he vowed to keep up his fight for the Republican nomination.

The Hawkeye State was not supposed to be this close for Clinton.

Monday’s contest will also offer the first hard evidence of whether Trump can turn the legion of fans drawn to his plainspoken populism into voters.

“It is rare that we have the opportunity we do now, to have a real contest of ideas”, Clinton told supporters late Monday. “In many way Iowa becomes a model for the rest of the country and the future of American democracy”. Most Democrats who were seen as potentially tough challengers decided against a run, including Vice President Joe Biden. Aware that even a slim victory over Sanders would reinvigorate questions about her candidacy, she foresaw a long race to come.

More than two-thirds of likely Democratic caucusgoers in Iowa believe the Iowa caucus system is rigged against all but the very rich and powerful. No vehicle horns, no cheering – just a long line to get through a door guarded by Secret Service officers.

“The guy is coming from a place of anger”, said Cynthia Paschen, 55 of Ames.

“He reminds me of Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, said Mike Ray, 67, of Clinton, Iowa. “It’s a kinder message”.

Preliminary entrance polls showed that Sanders received large margins among younger voters and those who who are paid less than $50,000 a year. Fifty-nine percent of Sanders supporters Monday attended their first caucus, the polls show.

‘That is, I think, a very serious issue.

Sanders’s campaign raised about $33 million during the final three months of 2015, mostly from small contributions, and another $20 million during January. In her final days of campaigning, she pleaded for Iowans to back her because of her proven leadership. “And I want this matter resolved, and the best way to solve it is to do what I asked months ago, which is release these, let the public see them and let’s move on”. Both campaigns have already agreed to participate in an as-of-now unsanctioned February 4th debate in New Hampshire to be hosted by MSNBC and the Union Ledger, which if held would make up one of the four new debates. For Sanders, that means squeezing college towns and other strongholds of younger men and women, whereas for Clinton it means courting rich, older voters who lean more center than left, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. On Friday, the U.S. State Department announced they would withhold seven private email chains from Clinton’s server, saying they contain top-secret information.

“I don’t think they thought Bernie was going to do so well”, said Nancy Jones, a retired first-grade teacher from Council Bluffs who supporteds Clinton. Her campaign spent almost a year building a massive get-out-the-vote operation in Iowa.

Giffords, who was critically wounded in a shooting during an event at a Tuscon, Ariz., shopping center in 2011, was joined by her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, at Saturday’s event with both endorsing Clinton’s stance on smarter gun control and protecting the country from within. “My gosh, everyday my mailbox was full”, she said. I have a fantastic relationship with the people of Iowa and the evangelicals and the tea party.