With less than three weeks until ballots are cast in the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are neck and neck in the Hawkeye State.
{mosads}Clinton maintains a 2-point lead, within a new Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll’s margin of error, with 42 percent to Sanders’s 40 percent. Clinton saw a significant drop from her 9-point lead when the same question was asked last month.
This is the closest Sanders has come to overtaking Clinton in Iowa.
The tightening race — and Sanders’s slim lead in New Hampshire — has been accompanied by more antagonistic campaign rhetoric.
Clinton has gone after the Vermont senator for his votes on gun-related bills, calling him a “reliable vote for the gun lobby.”
Sanders fired back, saying Clinton’s attack was “mean-spirited” and “unfair” and pointing to his D-minus rating with the National Rifle Association.
He also said Clinton’s more aggressive tone is a sign that her campaign is in “serious trouble.”
Martin O’Malley places a distant third in the new poll, with 4 percent support. Fourteen percent of respondents said they are still uncommitted or not sure whom they will support.
The poll of 503 likely Democratic caucusgoers, conducted Jan. 7–10, has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.