Bernie Sanders is leading by an increasing margin in New Hampshire. (Getty)
The Iowa caucus, first stop on the primary tour, is only 10 days today. National polls show a commanding lead for Hillary Clinton, but Bernie Sanders’s hold on New Hampshire polls is increasing. Sanders also has the lead in one new poll in Iowa. The betting markets (according to PredictWise) and Iowa FiveThirtyEight forecasts strongly favor Hillary despite the tight polling margin in the state.
Here’s a look at the state of the race:
Iowa
Hillary Clinton, campaigning in South Carolina in this photo, trails Bernie Sanders in one Thursday poll but leads another. (Getty)
Two new polls in Iowa reached very different results. A new poll by KBUR shows Clinton with a 9-point lead over Sanders, 48 percent to 39 percent, with Martin O’Malley taking 7 percent. In other unwelcome news for Sanders, the poll shows that only 5.6 percent of voters polled are undecided, meaning there may not be a whole lot of room to make up ground.
However, CNN found Sanders had a lead of 8 points, 51 percent to 43 percent, with O’Malley carrying 4 percent. Sanders was also the most trusted candidate on the economy, a topic on which Clinton had led in CNN polling since August. CNN, however, also differs from the KBUR poll in showing a much higher portion of completely or partly undecided voters than, at 36 percent.
In polling averages provided by RealClearPolitics, Clinton maintains a 3.1-point lead, 46.5 to 43.4, with O’Malley at 5.3 percent.
Iowa Polling Averages (by RealClearPolitics)
- Hillary Clinton: 46.5%
- Bernie Sanders: 43.4%
- Martin O’Malley: 5.3%
FiveThirtyEight, which utilizes factors beyond polls in its “polls-plus” predictions, gives Hillary Clinton an 83 percent chance to take the state, with Sanders at 17 percent and O’Malley at less than 1 percent. (Due to rounding, the sum of the averages exceeds 100.) In its polls-only forecast, which doesn’t use eactra factors but weights the polls according to methodology and past accuracy, gives Clinton a 70 percent chance to win the primary, with Sanders at 30, well above her RealClearPolitics lead. FiveThirtyEight has yet to update for CNN’s poll, however.
FiveThirtyEight Polls-Plus Forecast for Iowa
Click the “next page” button below for a breakdown of New Hampshire and national polls, as well as a look at the Democratic primary schedule.