WHEN Hillary Clinton won Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses last February, the result was excruciatingly close. Now, with eight weeks to go in the general election campaign, it is clear the Democratic presidential nominee can expect a similarly close race against Donald Trump. Iowa is perhaps the most closely divided state in the country at this stage in the race, with polling averages separating the candidates by less than a single percentage point. For several weeks, those averages showed Mrs Clinton with the advantage. Now, it looks like Mr Trump has inched ahead. At stake in the small Midwestern state are six electoral votes—a relatively meagre haul compared to other states thought to be in play this year and one that almost certainly means more to Mr Trump than to Mrs Clinton. With larger states like Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado looking more solidly Democratic, it is unlikely that Iowa’s result will determine the outcome in a Clinton victory. For Mr Trump, however, who faces a narrower pathway to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the general election, Iowa could be everything.

A close finish here would reflect a deeply ingrained culture of competitive, purple politics and continue a swing-state trend that reaches back at least a generation. Al Gore won Iowa by a mere 4,000 votes in 2000; four years later, George W. Bush won it by just 10,000. Even Barack Obama’s relatively comfortable victories in 2008 and 2012 required intensive in-person campaigning.

But to say that Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump are neck-and-neck in Iowa because Democrats and Republicans are always competitive here misses an important development. In the 2016 contest, Mr Trump’s nationalist message and white working class appeal could resonate strongly among once-Democratic Iowa voters whose political perspectives have changed markedly in the four years since Mr Obama’s re-election. Some 92% of Iowa's population is white; only a quarter has a university degree.

In the aftermath of the 2014 midterm—in which Republican Joni Ernst defeated Democrat Bruce Braley in a high-profile U.S. Senate race here—election forecaster Harry Enten observed that white voters in Iowa without a college degree had shifted sharply against Democrats, both in the election results and in their views on Mr Obama’s performance as president. That shift, he suggested, could be damaging to the party’s prospects in 2016, given that more than 90% of Iowa voters are white and a majority are not college graduates.

Mr Enten made his observations well before the reality television star entered the race. Now that he is the nominee, they look more prescient than ever. Mr Trump’s candidacy caters explicitly to the anxieties and grievances of white working class voters. These are the very Iowa voters who have supported Democratic candidates in the past but now appear primed to reject them.

Mr Trump and his vice-presidential running mate Mike Pence have moved decisively to capitalise on this opportunity, visiting the state nearly every week since the Republican convention in July and cultivating surprisingly close relationships with the Iowa’s Republican establishment.

Leading the way is Terry Branstad, the governor of Iowa, who has become Mr Trump’s leading advocate in the state. He has lent much of his political machinery to his election. Mr Branstad’s former campaign manager is now a senior adviser to Mr Trump’s Iowa operation, and his own son is the Trump campaign’s state director. Bruce Rastetter, meanwhile, an agricultural entrepreneur and major Republican donor, is advising the candidate on farm policy and has been floated as a possible secretary of agriculture within a Trump administration.

On September 13th, underscoring his warm ties with the establishment, Mr Trump will appear at a lunch-hour fundraiser in suburban Des Moines that is sponsored by some of the state’s most prominent businessmen. These closer ties appear to be bearing fruit, in the form of better campaign coordination and grassroots organisation—fundamentals that Mr Trump has struggled with in other key states.

Mr Trump has also been quick to deploy Mr Pence—the notably conservative, unambiguously Midwestern governor of Indiana—as a leading Iowa envoy. It was Mr Pence (pictured) who walked the grounds of the Iowa State Fair last month, and Mr Pence who held rallies in socially conservative western Iowa, where Republican voters are perhaps less receptive to Mr Trump’s bombastic style and lack of substance.

Mrs Clinton, meanwhile, has built out a wide and deep state-wide campaign organisation, even as the candidate herself has remained largely absent. Since the conventions, she has spent all of a single day within the borders of Iowa and held two more events in neighboring Nebraska and Illinois where the media markets bleed into Iowa. Vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine has also spent a day in the state.

Their relative absence doesn’t represent a lack of engagement, however. The Clinton campaign boasts of 33 campaign offices across the state, staffed with scores of paid staffers and thousands of volunteers tasked with knocking doors, making phone calls and—when early voting begins later this month—pressing voters to cast their ballots. Mrs Clinton has been airing television ads repeatedly since she became the nominee. Many of them attack Mr Trump's character and business and are aimed at those working-class voters who might be considering a vote for him. And in lieu of candidate visits, the campaign has shepherded numerous political and celebrity surrogates through the state, such as Ashton Kutcher, the actor and Iowa native, who met supporters at a Cedar Rapids campaign office late last month.

In that narrow caucus contest last winter, it was Mrs Clinton’s superior organisation that ultimately prevailed over Bernie Sanders's grassroots enthusiasm. If she wins in November, it will probably be for the same reason.