Iowa’s frantic final push: Insults, accusations and closing arguments | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Presidential candidates offered closing arguments – as well as insults and accusations – as they criss-crossed Iowa in search of crucial last-minute votes the day before voters head to caucuses.

With huge blocs of voters still not certain about their choice, Republican front-runners traded barbs over who was a true conservative. Democrats clashed over the meaning of Hillary Clinton’s latest email controversy.

The State Department designated 22 of the emails that Clinton, the former secretary of state, sent or received on her private server as “top secret” gave critics a fresh reason to attack her for failing to properly secure sensitive information.

Clinton said Sunday that that “it was not the best choice” to use a private email system for government business, and charged Republicans were using the issue to beat up on her. “I just want this matter resolved,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”

Clinton led 45-42 percent over Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, in the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released Saturday.

There were echoes of 2008 for Clinton. She began that campaign as a strong caucus favorite, only to wind up third behind Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, has had a similar surge. He’s campaigned on ridding the United States of income inequality.

“I thought that message would resonate,” he said Sunday on ABC. of his popularity in Iowa and elsewhere. “I did not think it would resonate as fast as it did.” His campaign announced Sunday it had raised more than $20 millionin January, almost all from small online donations.

The fight in the closing hours was for a sizeable pool of undecideds – 16 percent of Clinton backers said they could still switch, while 29 pertcent of Sanders supporters say the same.

The big variable is turnout. “We will win the caucus on Monday night if there is a large voter turnout,” Sanders told an audience in the Iowa town of Manchester.

Clinton does well with voters over 45, while Sanders has a huge edge with younger voters, but they traditionally are more reluctant to caucus. Obama’s appeal eight years ago was a big factor in attracting those voters, but so far, there’s little evidence of a similar new voter turnout.

Among Republicans, the race Sunday remained an often bitter brawl. Real estate mogul Donald Trump and Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., all vying for one of the top three spots, took turns insulting each other Sunday.

“Ted is a liar. This is why nobody likes him,” Trump told ABC.

As ads by Cruz supporters charge Trump has only recently discovered conservatism, Cruz himself tried not to respond to his rival’s latest blasts.

“I’m not going to engage in personal attacks,” Cruz told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He was less generous to Rubio, who’s been under fire for his 2013 support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Rubio backed away from that position after conservatives criticized him.

Still, Cruz told CNN, “A vote for Marco is a vote for amnesty.”

Rubio fired back. “The lie that his whole campaign is built on is that he’s the only conservative and everyone else is a sellout and a RINO (Republican in name only) and it’s absurd,” he said.

When he campaigned this weekend, Cruz stressed his religious ties and his fierce loyalty to the conservative cause. He urges supporters to “awaken the body of Christ that we may pull back from the abyss.”

He’s competing for that vote with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and others, and hasn’t quite convinced a lot of sympathetic voters. “I like where Cruz stands, but sometimes he comes off as a little harsher than I want,” said David Smith, a software engineer from Ames.

Mobilizing the Republicans’ evangelical bloc could inch him closer to Trump. While the Register poll had Trump up 28-23 over Cruz, it found 47 percent of GOP caucus-goers said they were evangelicals, down from 57 percent four years ago. If evangelical turnout swells to 60 percent Monday, Trump’s projected lead shrinks to 1.

Anita Kacmarynski , a volunteer from Newton, is trying to get out the word. “We believe in the Constitution. We believe in the Bible. When you’re in the room, you feel that Cruz will do what you believe in,” she said.

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Rubio, a favorite of mainstream Republicans, could benefit from a familiar caucus scenario. Should supporters of like-minded candidates who are faltering such as Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, or Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, decide they have little chance, they could switch to Rubio.

Mark Lansing, a Dubuque credit counselor, found Rubio to be “most articulate, the best opportunity for us to win in the fall, by far. I love that he supports traditional values, his heart is in the right place.” Trump, he said, is “the worst possible candidate.”

Trump retains solid, seemingly unshakeable support. He campaigned with Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a Christian school with strong evangelical ties, Sunday.

Trump’s refusal to debate Thursday apparently didn’t hurt him. His supporters are unfazed by charges he’s only recently embraced conservative principles, and cheer his eagerness to flaunt conventional wisdom and political behavior.

Kelly Barker, a Colfax small business owner, plans to caucus for the first time. She appreciates how Trump mostly funded own campaign. “He’s not a puppet in anyone’s back pocket, he’s his own man,” she said.

Maria Recio of McClatchy’s Washington Bureau contributed