Clinton leads by just a 3 point margin in Iowa according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll (A- rated by 538) among likely democratic caucus-goers.
On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton holds just a three-point lead among likely voters over Bernie Sanders, 48 percent to 45 percent, while Martin O'Malley gets 5 percent.
But among potential Democratic caucus-goers, Clinton's advantage grows to six points, 49 percent to 43 percent. (In October, Clinton's lead here was 11 points, 47 percent to 36 percent.)
Note the second paragraph — Among a broader set of potential caucus goers, her advantage is 6 points in this poll, which is the result that is directly comparable to their last poll.
In New Hampshire, Sanders leads by 4 among likely voters, nearly splitting the difference between the Fox poll with Sanders up 13, and the PPP poll with Clinton up 3.
In the Democratic race, Sanders is ahead of Clinton by four points among likely primary voters, 50 percent to 46 percent, which is within the margin of error of plus-minus 4.8 percentage points. O'Malley is at 1 percent.
Among the larger universe of potential Democratic primary voters, Sanders' lead increases to six points, 50 percent to 44 percent. In October, the Vermont senator held a nine-point lead over Clinton.
Note also that Sanders performs stronger in both states in the general in this poll. The poll results for the general are:
In Iowa:
Clinton 48 Trump 40 — Sanders 51 Trump 38
Cruz 47 Clinton 43 — Sanders 47 Cruz 42
Rubio 47 Clinton 42 — Sanders 44 Rubio 44
In New Hampshire:
Clinton 45 Trump 44 — Sanders 56 Trump 37
Cruz 48 Clinton 44 — Sanders 55 Cruz 36
Rubio 52 Clinton 40 — Sanders 50 Rubio 41
What does all this mean? well, if more polls corroborate the Iowa finding, then Iowa may indeed go down to the wire. This is the closest result in Iowa since Biden announced he wasn’t running (tied with a CBS/YouGov poll that has always been very favorable to Sanders). On the other hand, this could just be sampling variability. We will see.
In NH, this poll pretty much hits the average of recent polls we’ve seen. Nothing too surprising. Sanders is ahead by single digits. The general election numbers in New Hampshire are something truly remarkable though, with Sanders doing about 20 points better in the three matchups tested. Pretty amazing. That could obviously change, but it speaks to his appeal in New Hampshire in particular (in Iowa he also performs better, but not to nearly the same degree).