The latest poll of New Hampshire voters is our and it contains good news for Hillary Clinton and, despite a lead, not so good news for Mitt Romney:
Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) — Senator Hillary Clinton leads among Democratic voters in New Hampshire, the state that traditionally holds the first U.S. presidential primaries, while Mitt Romney holds a narrow edge over his Republican rivals, a new poll shows.
Clinton, of New York, is backed by 41 percent of likely voters, compared with 20 percent for second-place Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, according to a poll by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. Former Senator John Edwards is in third place with 11 percent.
In the Republican race, former Massachusetts Governor Romney has support from 26 percent of Republicans likely to vote in the primary. That compares with 20 percent for his nearest competitor, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Senator John McCain of Arizona has 17 percent and former Senator Fred Thompson 10 percent.
Why is a 6 point lead bad news for Romney ? For one simple reason, as a former Massachusetts Governor, he should be expected to win New Hampshire, and do so handily, just based on name recognition alone. The fact that he’s nearly within the margin of error against Giuliani is not a good sign, and neither is this:
Forty percent of Republican voters in New Hampshire thought Giuliani would be best suited in a presidential match-up with Democrats next year, topping the 29 percent of voters who said the same thing about Romney.
Expect Romney’s numbers to keep falling.
And the rest of the Republican field ? They were where you’d expect them to be:
Fifteen percent of Republicans were undecided. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Texas Representative Ron Paul, California Representative Duncan Hunter, and Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo attracted single-digit voter support
Four months and counting.
