Where 2016 Candidates Stand in NY a Week Before Primary
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are leading their respective races.
-- The two presidential candidates who call New York home have significant leads in their respective races before the state's primaries next Tuesday.
The latest poll has Donald Trump leading by more than 30 percent and Hillary Clinton ahead by 14 percent, according to the NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist survey released Monday.
The margins between Trump and Clinton and their respective rivals are relatively large but both have actually shrunk since the last poll was released.
Quinnipiac University released a poll on March 21 that had Trump with 56 points to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's 20 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich's 19. The new NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll has Trump with 54 points, Kasich with 21 points and Cruz with 18, suggesting that Cruz's "New York values" comments may have irked some voters. He also hasn't campaigned in the state, where there are 95 Republican delegates up for grabs.
Cruz hasn't physically campaigned in New York since last Thursday, while Kasich and Trump campaigned in different areas of the state through the weekend.
Cruz held events in Nevada and California over the weekend and into Monday, as his wife, Heidi, headlined an event on Long Island and in Queens during that same period.
Both Democratic candidates have been campaigning regularly in New York, which appears to have helped Clinton widen her lead a bit.
The NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll has Clinton leading with 55 points to Sen. Bernie Sanders' 41 points. In the earlier Quinnipiac poll, Clinton had 54 points to Sanders' 42 points.
A New York victory, where there are 247 Democratic delegates at stake, would be a big win for Clinton, especially after seven of the past eight contests have not gone her way.
"If she were to lose or if it were very close in New York -- a state that she represented in the Senate -- that would be very devastating" for her campaign, said James Campbell, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo.
Campbell told ABC News that part of the shock of the recent losses has been the margins of victory, and even if Sanders were to get 40 percent or so of the vote in New York, the state where he was born and raised, that would still be a "respectable showing."
"She might be able to survive that and she probably would be able to survive that, but it would make it more difficult and might have superdelegates rethinking their commitment to vote for Clinton on the first ballot," Campbell said.