As a new poll out Thursday shows Bernie Sanders practically tied with Hillary Clinton in Iowa, the Vermont senator’s campaign is reporting a surge of donations in response to the former Secretary of State’s “panic attacks” earlier this week.
“As of now, we are at about $1.4 million raised since yesterday when the panic attacks by the Clinton campaign began,” said Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs on Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve gotten 47,000 contributions. We’re projecting 60,000 donations. Even for our people-powered campaign, this is pretty darn impressive.”
On Monday and Tuesday, the Clinton camp struck out at Sanders’ single-payer healthcare proposal, drawing criticism from progressive groups who decried the remarks as “a crude, inflammatory distortion.”
Meanwhile, the highly anticipated Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released Thursday morning shows Clinton leading Sanders by a mere two points—well within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. That’s down from 9 percentage points a month ago.
The results of this survey combined with other recent polls are “raising the prospect that eight years after her stinging loss there to Barack Obama, the state that kicks off the presidential nominating process may once again deal the front-runner a momentum-sapping blow,” Margaret Talev wrote for Bloomberg.
“It shows Bernie is around to stay for sure,” Grant Woodard, a Des Moines lawyer who has worked for several state and national Democratic campaigns, told the Register. “It’s not a fly-by-night thing. It really shows we’re going to have a pretty crazy last few weeks here.”
The Register reports:
Bloomberg adds:
CBS News reported Thursday that the Sanders campaign is seizing this momentum by outspending Clinton on TV advertising “just as voters are beginning to pay attention to the race.”
According to CBS:
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In fact, CBS wrote: “The turnabout in ad spending—with Sanders topping Clinton in each of the past three weeks—prompted the Clinton campaign last week to send an email to supporters with the subject line “nervous.”
“I’m not trying to be dramatic about this (I swear! I’m really not!), but there’s a situation developing in Iowa and New Hampshire that could change the course of this election,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook wrote in the fundraising appeal. Later in the same email: “I just found out that he’s outspending us on TV advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Later Thursday, Sanders will be in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he will reportedly hold a 6 p.m. news conference to announce what his campaign is describing as “an important endorsement.”
Having recently snagged the backing of progressive advocacy organizations MoveOn and Democracy for America, Sanders on Thursday gained his first national magazine endorsement, from The Nation.
“This magazine rarely makes endorsements in the Democratic primary (we’ve done so only twice: for Jesse Jackson in 1988, and for Barack Obama in 2008),” the editorial board wrote. “We do so now impelled by the awareness that our rigged system works for the few and not for the many. Americans are waking up to this reality, and they are demanding change.”