page_title: Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign
section_title: Speaking events
hierarchical_section_title: Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign / Campaign / Speaking events
caption_attribution_description: Bernie Sanders Rally
context_page_description: In the 2016 presidential campaign, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders sought the Democratic Party's nomination in a field of six major candidates and was the runner up with 46% of the pledged delegates behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who won the contest with 54%. Sanders, the junior United States Senator and former Representative from Vermont, began with an informal announcement on April 30, 2015, and a formal announcement that he planned to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States on May 26, 2015, in Burlington, Vermont. Sanders had been considered a potential candidate for president since at least September 2014. Though he had previously run as an independent, he routinely caucused with the Democratic Party, as many of his views align with Democrats. Running as a Democrat made it easier to participate in debates and get his name on state ballots.
  Sanders's chief competitor for the nomination was Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state. Sanders drew large crowds to his speaking events and his populist and social democratic politics won him particular support among Americans under 40.
context_section_description: Sanders often drew large crowds, with many filled to capacity and some with additional supporters outside who could not fit in the venue but still wanted to attend. Early in his campaign, the media favorably compared his rallies' attendance to Hillary Clinton's. Events scheduled by his campaign were drawing "overflow crowds" around the country. Sanders drew more than 700 supporters to a mid-June event in Iowa, which The Wall Street Journal noted was "the same number who went to a Hillary Clinton event on Sunday that featured a buffet table and a live band." After an estimated 3,000 people attended an event in Minneapolis, Sanders said he was "Stunned. Stunned. I mean I had to fight my way to get into the room. Standing room only. Minneapolis was literally beyond belief."
  Beginning in June, crowds at Sanders's events became much larger than those of any other presidential candidate who had announced up to that point. At a June 20 appearance in Denver, Sanders drew an estimated 5,000 supporters at a routine campaign stop, equaling the size of the crowd at Hillary Clinton's campaign launch speech in New York City the previous weekend.
  On July 1, a crowd of at least 10,000 came to see Sanders in Madison, Wisconsin, nearly twice the size of the biggest crowd of his main primary challenger, Hillary Clinton. A Sanders campaign event in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on July 3, drew over 2,500 supporters. To date, this was the largest audience for any 2016 presidential candidate in Iowa. Sanders drew a crowd of over 11,000 on July 18 in Phoenix, Arizona. At that time this had been the largest crowd of any 2016 candidate, of any party.
  On a three-day West Coast tour in August, Black Lives Matter activists interrupted an event in Seattle. The activists removed Sanders from the podium and Sanders looked on as they spoke. The campaign eventually shut down the event. On the following day Sanders spoke to a crowd of 28,000 supporters at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon, and on August 10 more than 27,000 people showed up for his rally in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. On September 14, 2015, Sanders spoke at Liberty University, a highly Republican-influenced college, during their Convocation.
  In September, Sanders made three speeches in New Hampshire on Labor Day, during his first campaign swing since the launch of his political group, Our Revolution.  In these, he attempted to convince the progressives who had backed him into backing Clinton.  In doing so, he faced down vociferous objections from audience members who still supported third-party candidates such as Jill Stein, and those who objected to Clinton as their party's nominee.
caption: Bernie Sanders rally in Portland, Oregon, August 2015
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