Council Bluffs, Iowa - Neck-and-neck in the polls, Donald Trump stepped up his pitch to evangelical voters on Sunday in a last bid to draw religious conservatives away from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
With polls showing the two in a tightening race for the Iowa caucus, Trump attended services at the First Christian Orchard Campus, a church in Council Bluffs, and appeared at a rally at a nearby middle school with Jerry Falwell Jr., the leader of the nation’s largest Christian university.
“We could lose our country if we don’t choose a man that’s electable. And he’s the only one that’s electable, in my opinion,” said Falwell, who heads Liberty University.
A Des Moines Register-Bloomberg Politics poll unveiled late Saturday shows just how tight the race has grown. Trump led the Republican field with 25 percent, Cruz was at 23 percent and Rubio trailed at 15 percent. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were in a statistical tie.
Trump's campaign has fractured the GOP's traditional conservative evangelical base, whose adherents are torn between the frontrunner's blunt talk and Cruz's ideological purity. Evangelicals make up about 60 percent of the GOP electorate in Iowa – about the same proportion as Georgia.
“We believe in Trump. He’s willing to say it like it is. He doesn’t sugarcoat it, and it’s as simple as that,” said Nicolette Farley, a Trump supporter at his rally in Council Bluffs, a town on the Nebraska border.
Trump, a thrice-married Manhattan billionaire, has long showed surprising strength with evangelical voters here. And in the closing hours before Monday’s vote, he’s making a final attempt to court them, including posting a Facebook video featuring his family’s bible.
"I really appreciate the support given to me by the evangelicals," Trump said in the video. "They've been incredible."
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