The anti-establishment wave dominating the 2016 US election surged forward in New Hampshire on Sunday as the two clear frontrunners in the state for the Democratic and Republican nominations spoke at packed rallies within an hour of each other.

On the coast, senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont roused an audience of 1,220 at a community college in Portsmouth with his call for a “political revolution” to overcome the corporate campaign donations he claims are corrupting Washington.

A few miles inland, billionaire businessman Donald Trump, who is largely funding his own campaign without the help of Super Pacs, spoke to a similarly enthusiastic crowd about what it would take to “make America great again”.

It is perhaps the only point of policy on which these two diametrically opposed candidates agree, but their challenge to the political orthodoxy has kept both firmly at the top of opinion polling with less than two days before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton, who lags Sanders in New Hampshire by an average of 13 percentage points in recent polls, left the state entirely on Sunday after a Saturday night event in the same converted gymnasium where Sanders rallied a larger and more boisterous crowd.

She campaigned instead in Flint, Michigan, where she has seized on the city’s water crisis to try to demonstrate her own concern for economic inequality. “I feel blessed to be here,” Clinton said at a church there.

Her husband, Bill, who had been a big feature of her campaign in Iowa, where she narrowly beat Sanders last Monday, has also recently been away campaigning in Nevada instead – the scene of their next battle in what now threatens to be a protracted campaign for the Democratic nomination. But the former president was back in New Hampshire on Sunday for a low-key talk, and was expected to appear at a series of primary-eve events alongside Clinton and their daughter Chelsea.



Bernie Sanders, waves to the crowd during a campaign stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

“We started this camapign at 3% in the polls, and we were 30 to 40 points down in New Hampshire,” Sanders told the crowd in Portsmouth. “Well, a lot has changed in the last few months.”



Despite refusing large contributions, Sanders raised $5m more than the former secretary state in January thanks to $20m in small donations averaging just $27, which has allowed his operation to spend more three times as much on advertising in New Hampshire, according to media tracking.

Instead, the Democratic race in the state has become a game of expectation management, with Clinton supporters arguing that anything less than a double-digit win by Sanders on Tuesday will show his momentum stalling in a state that borders his home in Vermont and ought to be his strongest territory.

Sanders, meanwhile, largely stuck to his now-familiar script calling for universal healthcare, free public college tuition and a doubling of the minimum wage – despite claims from Clinton and most party leaders that such ambitions are dangerously unrealistic.

“Real change comes from the bottom on up,” Sanders insisted. “In order to bring about the changes that America needs, we need a political revolution.”

At times, the senator also sounded increasingly indistinguishable from impersonations of him by comedian Larry David, who hosted Sanders in an appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend that gently, but sympathetically, mocked his distinctive Brooklyn manner.

“A lot of these things are really crazy, they don’t make any sense, no matter how you look at it,” Sanders said in Portsmouth while talking about healthcare reform. “What happens if you don’t fill the prescription? You get sick. It makes no sense.”

In contrast, a subdued Donald Trump seemed ready to rest on his laurels – and his own comfortable polling advantage – at a rally on the campus of Plymouth State University. During an address that was meandering even by Trump’s standards, the real estate mogul criss-crossed a variety of topics: immigration, trade and making fun of Jeb Bush. The first two play well among New Hampshire voters. The latter has always appealed to Donald J Trump.

The billionaire mocked Bush for bringing his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, on the campaign earlier this week. (His brother, George W, is expected to join him in South Carolina next week.) “Mom, mommy, please come walk in the snow,” the frontrunner said in his best impression of the former Florida governor.

Trump, who took the stage on Sunday to the Beatles’ Revolution with the air of a candidate trying to run out the clock, almost seemed to be trying not to make news. He once again cast doubt on Barack Obama’s loyalty to the United States. When noting that Obama refers to the Ayatollah Khamenei by his title of supreme leader, Trump raised an eyebrow: “There’s something strange going on,” Trump said. “I am not calling him the supreme leader – he’s not my supreme leader.”

The night before, Trump had turned in a relatively quiet performance as the latest Republican debate left him where he had started – winning – and left Florida senator Marco Rubio flailing.

“Did Marco Rubio do well?” Trump asked. “Did Ted Cruz do well?” They booed.

According to Trump, the reason he himself was loudly booed several times during the debate on Saturday at St Anselm’s College was the Republican National Committee’s alleged packing of the room with donors. The RNC has insisted that only 75 of the 1,000 debate attendees were donors and that students at the school made up most of the crowd. On Sunday, Trump insisted the students had scalped their tickets and sold them to rich donors.

His own crowd on Sunday afternoon added up – like the one down the road for Sanders – to more than 1,000 supporters of an insurgency. But for all the New Hampshire loyalists who have stood by Trump throughout his sustained campaign, there were many supporters showing up for the show itself.

His audience was noticeably thinner by the time Trump stopped speaking, with a steady stream of attendees leaving early on Super Bowl Sunday.

The Sanders faithful stayed until the bitter end.