McCain has 4% margin in GOP race

There have been more big moves on the Democratic candidate markets following a new poll by Gallup for USA TODAY that shows that Hillary Clinton is 13% behind amongst New Hampshire voters who will take part in the first full primary of the 2008 White House Race, in New Hampshire, tomorrow.

Obama is at 41% with Clinton on 28% and Edwards on 19%. This is by far the biggest margin that we have seen in any NH poll since last Thursday’s Iowa Caucus propelled the junior Senator from Illinois into the favourite slot.

If there is a Clinton deficit on this scale in tomorrow’s election then it becomes hard to see how Hillary can recover – but it would be dangerous to write her off. As has been said many times she is a formidable politician.

In the Republican race the poll has McCain on 34% with Romney at 30% and Huckabee 13%, with Paul and Giuliani on 8% each.

In the betting Obama has now tightened to 0.63/1 to get the nomination with Hillary now having drifted to 1.54/1. On Intrade the 0300GMT prices were (out of 100) Obama 63.8 and Clinton 36.1.

A note to those whose prime interest is UK politics: There will be a UK-based thread either later today or tomorrow morning on the Times Populus January survey which should be out. In December it was C40-L32-LD16 and the big questions are whether having a new leader will impact on the Lib Dem share and whether Populus will follow the trend of the fall-off in the Tory lead, reported by ICM and the last YouGov surveys.

Mike Smithson