The economic arguments are resonating, in Iowa and elsewhere, with voters like Max Goldman, a 53-year-old technology consultant from Kansas City, Iowa. Mr. Goldman, who traveled to Ms. Warren’s event in Clarinda, said he wished Democrats talked more about the federal deficit. But he said he did not credit Mr. Trump with the improving economy, and thinks other voters — even moderates — might feel the same way.
“Every president will take credit for the economy,” Mr. Goldman said. “But the stock market is not the economy, and the wages argument she’s making is a good one.”
Kyle Hunt, a 40-year-old loan officer from Clive, a Des Moines suburb, said at Mr. Buttigieg’s event on Sunday in Knoxville that the economy where he lived seemed to be “working fine” because there were job opportunities. But he said he had also noticed recently that more people, especially minorities and women, were borrowing more money, including to pay for rent.
“I definitely see people that it’s not working for,” he said.
Mike Rowold, 72, a crop insurance adjuster who attended a town hall-style event that Mr. Biden held at a high school in Tipton, Iowa, on Saturday, said most people there were “not concerned about the stock market in any way, shape or form.”
“That economy is a false bubble,” he said.
Mr. Rowold, who said he would support Mr. Biden in the caucuses, faulted the Trump administration’s trade policies for hurting farmers in Iowa.
“Very few of these guys are actually investing any of their money into the stock market,” he said of the farmers. “They’re hanging onto the farms that they have right now.”
Ms. Mabior, the out-of-work insurance adjuster, said she has not yet decided which if any of the Democratic candidates she would support. Asked whether Mr. Trump’s celebration of the booming stock market and G.D.P. growth meant anything to her, she said most economic indicators had become irrelevant: Iowa, she pointed out, has among the lowest unemployment rates in the nation: 2.6 percent.