Pollster on Hillary's Iowa stumbles: 'This feels like 2008 all over again'
The latest Iowa survey has left at least one pollster wondering if history might repeat itself. At this point eight years ago, Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama in the Iowa polls by the same margin of seven points that she now leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). This uncanny parallel led Iowa Poll pollster J. Ann Selzer to posit, "This feels like 2008 all over again."
By late November 2007, Obama had surged ahead and ended up winning Iowa's Democratic caucuses in early 2008. And we all know what happened after that.
But could Bernie really pull off a similar upset, based on his performance in Iowa? NPR notes that there are definitely some similarities between the two candidates. Just like Obama, Sanders is winning young voters. The Des Moines Register notes that Sanders is also claiming 43 percent of first-time caucus-goers votes while Clinton only captures 31 percent.
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Still, as NPR contends, "Sanders is no Obama." NPR points out that "he doesn't have the kind of field operation, for example, at this point needed to go the distance." Furthermore, Obama enjoyed serious institutional support from the Democratic Party, which Sanders does not.
But even if Sanders can't go the distance, he can still definitely make Clinton sweat a little as she feels 'the Bern.'
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