Sunday morning, the 38-year-old Buttigieg drew an energetic throng of more than 1,800 to a middle-school gym in Nashua. The campaign claimed it was the largest crowd any candidate has drawn in New Hampshire this cycle, though Sanders made the same claim a few hours later after drawing nearly 2,000 to a Sunday night rally.

One indication of his apparent success: the attacks he drew from most of his rivals, including Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator whose supremacy the boyish former mayor is threatening, and former vice president Joe Biden, the fading national front-runner.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Showing strength two days before the first-in-the-nation primary, Pete Buttigieg worked on Sunday to vacuum up more of the state’s all-important undecided voters, drawing boisterous crowds at events across New Hampshire.


And even as a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University tracking poll found Sanders leading on Sunday, the crowds and energy reflected the momentum Buttigieg has gained in recent days.

Sparked by his better-than-expected performance in Iowa last week, where the state Democratic party says he won the most national delegates, and the collapse of Biden’s aura of electability, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor seemed to be winning voters who have been searching for months for the candidate who can win in November.

Amy Meserve of Amherst, N.H., entered the Nashua rally undecided. She left a member of Team Pete.

Carl Stewart handed out Pete Buttigieg yard signs after a town hall with the mayor in Keene, N.H. Erin Clark/Globe Staff

“I heard what I needed to hear,” said, Meserve, 46, a teacher who cites school shootings as a top concern but, like so many other Democratic voters, wants a candidate “who can beat Trump.”

“I know I said I was a Biden person, but I think I might be a Pete person,” she said.

Buttigieg’s surge drew fire from multiple directions. Biden and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota are criticizing the mayor as not experienced enough for the job. Sanders on Sunday continued to hit him for funding his campaign with donations from wealthy elites and corporate interests.


“I’m running against some guys, Pete Buttigieg among others, who have raised campaign funds from over 40 billionaires,” Sanders said amid a busy four-stop day on the trail Sunday. “If you think people are going to get money from CEOs of drug companies and are going to tackle the greed and corruption of the pharmaceutical industry, you’re mistaken.”

At a later town hall in Claremont, Sanders’ campaign cochair Nina Turner slammed candidates who fund-raise in a “wine cave” with crystal chandeliers, a reference to a Buttigieg fund-raiser in Napa Valley, Calif. “You don’t have to raise money like that anymore,” she said.

Buttigieg responded to Sanders’ attack on CNN Sunday. “Well, Bernie’s pretty rich and I’d happily accept a contribution from him,” he said. “I’m not a fan of the current campaign finance system, but I’m also insistent that we’ve got to go into this [fight against Trump] with all of the support we can get.”

Former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg rallied with a crowd of hundreds at the Get Out the Vote event in Dover, N.H. Erin Clark/Globe Staff

Running third or even fourth in the polls, Warren sought to hover above the volley of attacks flying between her rivals and suggested she had no intention of attacking her rivals to try to stop their momentum.

“We’re going to have to bring our party together in order to beat Donald Trump,” Warren told reporters after an event in Concord, where she delivered a standard stump speech. “And the way we do this is not by launching a bunch of attacks on each other and trying to tear each other down.”


Nonetheless, the race’s current dynamics spell potential trouble for her as well as for Biden. Both would face serious questions about their viability if they don’t do well on Tuesday.

Biden’s campaign continues to argue that his “firewall” is South Carolina, where he has substantial support among Black voters. Warren, meanwhile, has emphasized the breadth of her campaign.

“There are 55 more states and territories after this,” Warren said Sunday. “It looks like it is going to be a long battle to the nomination.”

Further complicating the picture for Biden and Warren is the burst of momentum Klobuchar of Minnesota has gained in recent days.

“We’re clearly surging,” she told the Globe after speaking to an at-capacity crowd of about 700 at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester.

She was easy-going and confident as she spoke, cracking the crowd up with jokes, like one about her campaign slogan from her first campaign, in fourth grade — “Go All the Way with Amy K” — while making a passionate pitch for why she can beat Trump.

“If you are tired of the extremes in our politics, and the noise and the nonsense, you have a home with me,” she said.

But it’s Buttigieg who most clearly seemed to be catching fire.

Many of the voters jamming Buttigieg events this weekend have said they’ve been considering other candidates but have now come around to the idea that Buttigieg might be the electable moderate they need to beat Trump.


These voters said they now worry that Biden is too frail, Sanders too extreme, and Warren or Klobuchar, with lackluster performances in Iowa, too risky to bet on.

“I think Iowa pushed me,” said Jen Keene-Crouse, 37, who was first in line to see Buttigieg Sunday evening in Salem. “I feel good. I feel like he’s not an underdog anymore.”

She said she likes the message of Sanders but worries it won’t carry enough people.

“I just like Bernie,"she said, "but I don’t think he’s going to make it, which is really awful.”

Her friend Maryellen Viens said she has always liked Buttigieg but hesitated to support him because she is gay and worries Buttigieg’s sexuality would hurt him in a face-off against Trump. But now she is more confident that he can win and is thrilled to have settled on a candidate.

“We’re kind of relaxing now, a little bit,” Viens said.

In national polls, Buttigieg still lags behind other front-runners, and he performs particularly poorly with young people and voters of color — weaknesses his rivals are quick to point out.

In the latest poll, the mayor was tied for fourth place with Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, with 9 percent of voters ranking him as their first choice.

Biden was in the lead, with 24 percent, according to that poll. Sanders followed with 19 percent and Warren with 18 percent.


That poll however, conducted by The Economist/YouGov, surveyed people Feb. 2-4, during the Iowa caucuses. It is unclear how his Iowa performance and his gaining momentum in New Hampshire will influence future national poll results.

Just 4 percent of Black voters ranked Buttigieg as their first choice, compared to 43 percent of that group who chose Biden as their top choice.

That is weighing on the minds of some New Hampshire voters as they consider the former mayor.

Dan Kirkland, 64, of Salem, is leaning toward Buttigieg because “he doesn’t yell at you” like some of the other Democratic candidates. But he isn’t yet convinced he can beat Trump, and worries about Buttigieg’s support among Black voters elsewhere in the country.

“It may be a problem for him, but it shouldn’t be,” he said.

Liz Goodwin and Jess Bidgood of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Victoria McGrane can be reached at victoria.mcgrane@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @vgmac. Laura Krantz can be reached at laura.krantz@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @laurakrantz.