Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois are, for the first time, in a statistical dead heat for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to a nationwide Gallup poll of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
In a voter-preference survey conducted for USA Today over the weekend, with most of the telephone interviews completed prior to Sunday night’s nationally televised Democratic candidate debate in New Hampshire, Gallup reported that Mr. Obama edged out Mrs. Clinton by 30 percent to 29 percent.
The poll, which asked 470 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who they supported among the Democratic field of contenders and potential candidates, also showed that 17 percent backed former Vice President Al Gore, who has said he has no plans to run again. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was fourth at 11 percent. The poll had a margin of error of five percentage points.
Political pollsters, and Mr. Obama’s own campaign, cautioned yesterday that it was far too early to take any of the polls too seriously given the long, two-year election cycle. But Gallup’s prestige as one of the nation’s oldest polling organizations lent credibility to the survey’s snapshot findings that suggested the race between the two chief front-runners could be tightening up.
“I wouldn’t read too much into national polls this early. We’re pleased with the strength of our grass-roots effort that is growing every single day,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said.
Virtually every other national poll over the past several weeks and months has shown Mrs. Clinton to be the clear front-runner in the race, with Mr. Obama consistently in second place. RealClearPolitics, the political Web site that tracks all of the presidential campaign polls, said yesterday that Mrs. Clinton led her closest rivals in the national polls by an average of 8.8 percentage points.
Mrs. Clinton also led comfortably in three out of the first four state nominating contests of 2008 — New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida — while Mr. Edwards held on to a slight lead in the Iowa polls.
Still, Gallup’s poll found that Mr. Obama was trailing the former first lady by only five percentage points among Democrats alone, 29 percent to 34 percent, suggesting that the race was much closer than a USA Today poll taken last month, when Mrs. Clinton held a much wider 17-point lead.
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