Presidential hopefuls: Welcome to the Iowa battleground

DES MOINES - Ready or not, Iowans, you're once again a focal point in a presidential election.

Experts and campaign workers of both political persuasions agree what early polls appear to suggest: Iowa will be a closely contested, high-profile battleground state as the nation decides whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be its next president.

That tossup status will bring all the requisite attention: candidate visits, television ads, campaign staffers knocking on doors - it's all coming, and in some cases, it's already here.

'Iowa is a battleground state, and this year, neither party will take a chance with Iowa's six electoral votes. That could be the margin of victory,” Steffen Schmidt, a political scientist at Iowa State University, wrote in an email interview with the Gazette-Lee Enterprises Des Moines Bureau.

Schmidt's view of the presidential race nationally is more optimistic for Republicans than election forecasters, many of whom - at this early stage in the campaign, at least - project a decisive victory for Clinton.

But Schmidt's assertion that Iowa will be a battleground state is widely held. Although Election Day still is four months away, the signs are clear and insiders agree.

Polls and prognosticators

Forecasters are nearly unanimous in thinking the race for Iowa's six electoral votes will be close. ABC, NBC, the Washington Post and NPR all classify Iowa as a tossup state. Only the Crystal Ball, a well-regarded project of Larry Sabato and the University of Virginia Center for Politics, lists Iowa as 'leaning Democratic.”

One forecaster - Morning Consult - lists Iowa as the only pure tossup state in the nation.

'There's a tendency to assume Iowa is a Democratic state because Obama carried it by 10 points in 2008 and six points in 2012,” the Post's Chris Cillizza and Philip Bump wrote. 'But as of today, Iowa has a Republican governor, two Republican (U.S.) Senators and three (out of four) Republican members of Congress.”

Most early polls have shown a close race in Iowa between Clinton and Trump. Two new polls published this past week showed Clinton ahead by a small margin in one and Trump ahead by a similarly small margin in the other.

'The polls are showing that Iowa has been a tossup for a month at least,” state Republican Party chairman Jeff Kaufmann said. 'For the first time in a while, this may very well go down to the wire” in Iowa.

'I expect it (will be a battleground state), and I know that the RNC and the DNC both expect it, just in terms of the resources that I already see pulling into the state,” he added. '…

We're seeing tens of thousands of dollars, and that will move to millions of dollars that will be coming into this state.”

Follow the money to Iowa

While Trump's campaign is yet to show signs of investing in Iowa, the Clinton campaign, both state parties and the national Republican Party are putting their money here, providing a clear-cut signal that both parties have made winning the state a priority.

Clinton has had paid staff on the ground in Iowa for weeks, and the Iowa Democratic Party just this past weekend opened five new campaign offices across the state, including in Davenport, Sioux City and Cedar Rapids.

The Clinton campaign and state party will work to ensure those offices are filled with volunteers who make all those phone calls and knock on all those doors.

'We have a great organizing team on the ground. We are talking to voters every day,” said Tova Yampolsky, a regional organizing director for the Democrats in Des Moines. 'We feel this is going to make a difference.”

Clinton's Iowa press secretary Kate Waters said in an email statement that Clinton 'is committed to running hard in Iowa and talking with Iowans about her plans to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top.”

'Donald Trump is dangerous, divisive, unfit to be president, and our grass roots campaign is working from river to river to make sure we keep him out of the White House,” Waters added.

Trump's campaign thus far has not matched Clinton's staffing in Iowa. Even in placing second in the Iowa caucuses in February, Trump relied on drumming up support with big events and media coverage, successfully eschewing the traditional Iowa campaign staples of organizing and advertising.

Since becoming the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, Trump has enlisted the help of the state and national party structures in Iowa.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request seeking comment for this story.

Chris Carr, political director for the national Republican Party, said that partnership has been natural because Republicans have kept staff in Iowa for the past four years in an effort to build a long-term organization in consistently competitive states.

'One reason why it really helped, the marriage of the RNC and the Trump campaign, is we were totally opposite,” Carr said. 'We were the organization with all the bodies.”

That's why Clinton's early staffing edge is not a big deal, said Luke Martz, a Republican political consultant and Muscatine native who was Iowa field director for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign and now works in Wisconsin.

Martz said the Republican Party organizations can make phone calls, knock on doors and garner absentee ballots for Trump and other Republicans for now, but eventually the Trump campaign will need its own staff in the state to avoid overloading party workers.

'The party can't be working on stuff like exclusively worrying about yard signs and putting on events when they have (other) important things to do,” Martz said.

TV time

Another signal that Iowa is important to a candidate is television advertising, and Clinton already is on the airwaves here, as is at least one outside group supporting her.

In June, Clinton made an eight-figure, six-week ad buy in Iowa, which was part of an eight-state investment. The ads also ran in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia - all of which are rated as toss-ups or 'lean Democratic” by forecasters.

And Priorities USA, a pro-Clinton Super PAC, included Iowa markets in its recent $20 million ad buy.

The Trump campaign also is moving slower than Clinton on the TV advertising front. Trump's campaign has not paid for a television advertisement since early May, a few weeks before he became the party's presumptive nominee, according to the not-for-profit, nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity.