Trump's at 40% in Iowa. Is he doing well or is it just that Clinton is having a harder time closing the deal with undecideds than in other states?
I think there are multiple factors at work, but it seems clear that Iowans aren't big fans of either candidate....
What is sometimes forgotten about Obama, is that he performed exceptionally well in the "Farm Belt" region of the Lower Midwest (Iowa, Rural Illinois, Indiana, etc...) perhaps the best performance for a Democrat since Dukakis in '88 at the height of the farm crisis, where many rural counties in this region swung heavily Democratic from Northern MO to Southern IA, etc....
Obama ran as a MidWest Democrat and in '08 on an anti-Iraq war platform, which appealed greatly to many in a part of the country where there is historical greater international isolationist and anti-interventionist attitudes than in many other parts of the country, and overperformed his national numbers in '08 and '12 in Iowa.
Iowa appears to be one of the few states where Hillary was not able to consolidate the '08/'12 Obama base, and additionally is still seen as fairly hawkish on foreign policy, supporter of free-trade agreements that cost American Mfg jobs, and connected to "big wall street banks" in a state which has a long populist tradition, large chunk of employment related to manufacturing jobs, where older individuals would rather invest their money into Credit Unions than the big banks.
Ok---- Not saying that I agree that all of these statements about Hillary are factually correct, but I can see how some of these older viewers could relate to Trump's "isolationist and economically protectionist and nativist" image.
