Clinton: Off Her Peak, but Still Towering
Hillary Clinton is off her peak but still overwhelmingly strong in support for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, while Elizabeth Warren has inched up in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Clinton's backed by 61 percent of Democratic and Democratic leaning independents who are registered to vote, giving her a vast advantage over potential rivals Joe Biden, at 14 percent, and Warren, the freshman U.S. senator from Massachusetts, at 13 percent.
See PDF with full results here.
Still, Clinton's support has slipped from 69 percent in June, down by 8 points, while support for Warren is up by 6 points - not remotely enough to make it look competitive at this stage, but movement nonetheless. Biden has held essentially steady.
Warren's been described as the darling of liberals, and indeed her support among liberals has gained 11 points since June, while Clinton's has slipped in this group by 14 points. Nonetheless, Clinton still holds a wide 59-19 percent lead over Warren among liberals, with 12 percent for Biden. (Narrow it down to "very" liberals, combining the last two ABC/Post polls for an adequate sample size, and it's similar - Clinton 63 percent, Warren 21, Biden 6.)
There are few if any substantive differences across groups in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates - and very little support for three others tested, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb and Martin O'Malley. That makes it a far different-looking race from the GOP contest, in which, as reported last week, allegiances are widely scattered, with no clear leader.
METHODOLOGY - This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone interviews Dec. 11-14, 2014, among a random national sample of 1,000 adults, including 346 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who reported being registered to vote. Results have a 3.5-point error margin overall, and 6.0 points for registered leaned Democrats. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York.