OU Students Covering Caucuses

Presidential candidates on both sides of the ballot are barnstorming Iowa as we are just days away from the start of the presidential nominating process.  As Marlie Hall explains, now is the time they're focusing their pitch to get out the vote. News9 Intern Aimee Schnebeck is among fourteen students from the University of Oklahoma covering the Iowa Caucuses. 

OU Student Nola Allinger says the caucus is like nothing else shes ever experienced.

"Everything that we’ve done here is definitely indescribable. Definitely a once in a lifetime kind of thing," said Allinger. "You know to be standing there filming Bernie Sanders talk as you’re standing there next to people from CNN and Fox News has just been insane. And everyone that we meet are just like wow this is so cool I wish I could’ve done this in college."

With just six days to go before the Iowa caucuses - the two leading Republican candidates are focusing on one group in particular - evangelical Christians. Ted Cruz has a 12-point lead among white, evangelical Christians in Iowa - and he's in a virtual tie with Donald Trump for the overall lead.

"It was awesome getting the hands on experience of reporting. I have done much of that yet. And I’ve decided that its probably something I want to pursue in the future. So its given me a little bit of a better idea of what I want to do after I graduate," said OU student Ali Stratton.

Student Gloria Noble says the project has helped her realize the importance of this election. 

"We’ve interviewed the president of Planned Parenthood and we interviewed the president of Emily’s list. And so its been a really invigorating experience to meet people who are so much more experienced than we are and even journalists that are more experienced than we are that really do want to talk to us. It has been a really great experience knowing that there are people out there who respect that we are students but we are still trying to be journalists at the same time," said Noble.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton holds a narrow lead over Bernie Sanders in Iowa. Clinton is sending out her husband, President Bill Clinton, to campaign for her in Iowa beginning Thursday.

You can follow the OU journalism team here.