MANCHESTER, N.H. — In 2016, Bernie Sanders was the insurgent, and his landslide victory in the New Hampshire primary marked the start of a bruising months-long battle for the Democratic nomination with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This year, Sanders enters the New Hampshire primary as a front-runner. He essentially shared a victory in the Iowa caucuses with Pete Buttigieg and polls show him leading among likely voters in Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary.

A CNN poll released Saturday showed Sanders leading Buttigieg 26% - 21%; a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University poll released later in the day gave Sanders a 24%-22% lead over the former South Bend, Ind., mayor.

At a debate watch party in Manchester Friday, Rachel D'Andrea took turns watching intently and cheering as Sanders responded to questions on a massive television screen.

D'Andrea, 24, voted for Sanders in 2016, and she's planning to cast a ballot for him again on Tuesday.

"Bernie is for the people, for the working class, for people who have not been valued and appreciated in our economy and politics,” she explained when asked about her preference for Sanders. “I feel like he gives voice to people and also rallies communal power, so that we can get more done together.”

Richard Goyette and Marilyn Martin are also both repeat Sanders supporters this year.

“I was a huge fan of Elizabeth Warren, but she broke my heart,” said Goyette, 50, saying he was disappointed to hear Warren say Sanders told her in a private meeting that a woman could not win the presidency. Sanders denied he said it.

“I do like Tulsi Gabbard,” said Martin. “I did also like Elizabeth Warren, but the more she kept going, and the fact that she used to take corporate dollars and then, rolled some of that money into her presidential campaign, that didn’t sit well with me.”

Four years ago, New Hampshire voters like D'Andrea, Goyette and Martin propelled Sanders' primary campaign out of the fringe category and into the formidable. It was here that Sanders walloped the eventual nominee, beating Clinton by more than 20 percentage points. It is here that other candidates are now trying to oust the former outsider.

University of New Hampshire Professor Dante Scala has parsed data from the 2016 primary election and says there's potential for candidates like Buttigieg to pick off votes in the state’s “affluent suburban towns.”

Scala adds that the muddled results of the Iowa caucuses could cause Sanders' far-left base to rally around him, but that raises another question.

"He has a lot of cohesion," Scala said. "My question would be: If his supporters are fighting the Democratic party establishment, both here in New Hampshire and elsewhere, does that tend to repel other Democrats from seeing Bernie Sanders as someone who can hold the banner for them?"

It does repel some voters intending to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

At a coffee shop in Exeter, where Hillary Clinton earned about 46 percent of ballots cast in the 2016 primary, first-time voter Colby Ryan said Sanders is “a little too left-leaning.”

"Even though Bernie is very consistent [and] I think he's trustworthy and all that, I just think what he's proposing would kinda halt the progress that we've made in the last four years,” Ryan, 18, explained.

Ryan said he prefers a moderate, like Buttigieg, a candidate he believes won't alienate other Democrats, or send issues like healthcare reform to sit in Washington gridlock.

“I think Pete's probably going to get my vote," he said.

Back at the Sanders watch party, D'Andrea dismissed the concern that Sanders is too alienating, or uncompromising.

"I think Bernie has enough common sense and passion in his heart . . . to go the way that he needs to if that is to compromise," she said.