In the wake of more troubling polling for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, John Heilemann said Monday on MSNBC that it looks like the 2008 race in Iowa all over again for the Democratic frontrunner.
A new poll from Bloomberg Politics and the Des Moines Register shows support for Hillary Clinton in Iowa has slipped to 37 percent in the Democratic race, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) at 30 percent and Vice President Joe Biden at 14 percent, despite not being a declared candidate. Clinton has dropped 20 points since May.
"She is on a trajectory that’s dramatically downward. If you think back to eight years ago, she was leading in Iowa by six or seven points over John Edwards around this time, and a few more points over Obama at this time," Heilemann said. "The dynamics are strikingly similar to what was going on then in that state in that cycle."
Clinton has lost a third of her support in Iowa since May, Heilemann said, and Bloomberg's pollster said Sanders' coalition was reminiscent of the one then-Sen. Barack Obama built in 2008 en route to his upset victory there.
"The coalition that Sanders is building in Iowa—young voters, liberals, and new, first-time caucus goers," Heilemann said, "that is the Obama coalition in Iowa."