Bernie Sanders, the independent Democratic senator from Vermont, is within striking distance of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in a new poll of likely New Hampshire presidential primary voters. A new survey from the Morning Consult finds 44 percent of New Hampshire voters who say they will vote in the Democratic primary support Clinton with 32 percent supporting Sanders.
Eight percent say they would vote for Vice President Joe Biden, who is not currently a candidate, with two percent supporting former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and one percent supporting former Virginia governor Jim Webb. Eleven percent say they are undecided.
That’s the Morning Consult poll’s closest margin for Clinton in the three early primary states. Among likely Iowa caucus goers, 54 percent support Clinton while just 12 percent support Sanders and 20 percent say they don’t now. In South Carolina, 56 percent supporting Clinton and 10 percent support Sanders (while Biden does better than Sanders at 15 percent).
According to RealClearPolitics, Clinton still maintains a sizable 48-point lead in national polling for the Democratic nomination. And the Morning Consult poll for New Hampshire could be an outlier, since in other polls of the state Sanders has not been able to crack 20 percent support.
New Hampshire was a critical state for Clinton in her 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination. After losing the Iowa caucuses to Barack Obama, Clinton rallied back to win in New Hampshire, giving her enough momentum for a sustained primary campaign that she ultimately lost. The former first lady and New York senator declared her candidacy in April but essentially relaunched her campaign on Saturday with a highly publicized rally at New York’s Roosevelt Island.
Sanders, who entered the presidential race last month, is possibly helped in the polls by hailing from New Hampshire’s New England neighbor Vermont, but the self-described democratic socialist is also wowing young voters and liberals by campaigning with populist progressive messages on Wall Street, privacy, and economic issues.
On ABC’s This Week Sunday, Bill Kristol spoke about Sanders’s willingness to take positions on issues like trade that appeal to the Democratic base, in contrast to Clinton’s reticence. Watch the video, in which the panel discusses both Clinton’s and Republican Jeb Bush’s presidential launches, below:
