With the Iowa caucuses less than two weeks away and the nation’s first primary in New Hampshire a week later, battles for the top slot in both parties are heating up.
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Clinton trails by 45 points among undeclared voters, but just nine points among registered Democrats, though she led Sanders by 7 points in the latter category in December. But if the primary were held today, 60 percent would choose Sanders, while 33 percent would support Clinton. Clinton still leads by double digits in national polls, underscoring her electability in the general election, yet Sanders also leads in Iowa.
Stylistically, the gloves certainly came off in a number of exchanges between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen.
The CNN/WMUR survey found that more than half of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters – 52% – have already “definitely decided” who they will vote for, signaling less room for shifting loyalties as the primary approaches on February 9.
Clinton’s Houston visit comes at a time when contender Bernie Sanders is not only rapidly closing the gap in polls in Iowa, in some surveys Sanders is winning.
The Vermont senator now leads Clinton by an imposing 27 percentage points, a figure which might have been deemed impossible by many of Sanders’ own faithful at the start of his campaign at the back end of past year. “I mean, this guy is a total whack job”, Trump said to his supporters in Norwalk, Iowa. CNN reports: Those undeclared voters are critical to Sanders’ support: 70% in the new poll say they plan to vote for him, 25% Clinton. “But it’s just a poll and we take nothing for granted”, Sanders’s campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in a statement. The lead is enormous by New Hampshire standards, where most polling has shown a relatively tight race between Sanders and Clinton. This gives Sanders an additional 10 percent since December 2015.
Sanders also has a 44-point advantage among men and a 14-point advantage among women. Clinton said, according to The Hill, adding that the recently passed FAST Act doesn’t go far enough.
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The shift is, in part, due to waning of interest in the issue of national security among Democratic primary voters.
