Hillary might have her work cut out for her after all. A new poll shows Sen. Sanders narrowing Hillary’s gap in the sparsely populated Democratic presidential primary field… at least in New Hampshire.
According to a poll released by Morning Consult, Hillary’s lead in New Hampshire has dwindled to 12 points over the Vermont’s socialist hero. The same percentage of respondents indicated they’re currently undecided.
Is New Hampshire within Sanders’ reach? As Morning Consult pointed out:
No matter who captures the Democratic nomination, that candidate will have to contend with voters’ impressions of President Obama. And in New Hampshire and Iowa, two states solidly in the swing column, Obama’s approval ratings are worryingly low.Just 43 percent of New Hampshire voters say they approve of the job Obama is doing, while 56 percent disapprove. In Iowa, 43 percent approve and 54 percent disapprove.
Hillary’s scandalous service in the Obama administration might make the task of distancing herself difficult. Clinton maintains large leads in South Carolina and Iowa, but Sanders managed to come within 8 points of Clinton in a Wisconsin straw poll last week.
According to The Hill:
Clinton finished with 49 percent support among those who voted at the state party convention; Sanders finished in second place with 41 percent. Vice President Biden and former Gov. Martin O’Malley (Md.) tied at third with 3 percent. Former Sen. Jim Webb (Va.) followed with under 2 percent, and former Gov. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) closed out the poll with 1 percent.
Hillary has the Clinton machine at her disposal, but Sanders’ well-loved populist tendencies might prove troublesome for Mrs. Clinton. On Charlie Rose’s show last week, Sanders floated an egregiously high tax rate of 50% on America’s top income earners. Sanders’ hard core supporters (see also: Occupy endorses Sanders), love the tax the 1% into oblivion! rhetoric.
We’re working right now on a comprehensive tax package, which I suspect will, for the top marginal rates, go over 50 percent,” Sanders said on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” program. The current top rate is 39.6 percent.The self-described democratic socialist said he is running on a platform of “redistribution of wealth,” citing “grotesque levels of wealth inequality in this country.””It is time to redistribute money back to the working families of this country from the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and tax policy is one of the ways we do that,” Sanders told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt on the show.Sanders also said he would raise the corporate tax rate, the highest in the developed world, even as the White House and many Republicans push to lower it. Sanders also said he wanted to close loopholes. “If you look at the collective percentage of revenue coming in from corporations today, it is significantly lower than it was back in the 1950s,” he said. “I think it’s about 10 percent today.”
Whether or not Sanders can reach beyond the left-wing of the Democratic party into the blue center remains to be seen. But if anyone currently in the Democratic primary field can cause trouble for the Clinton’s, Sanders seems the best bet.
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