FOR the first time in weeks, Hillary Clinton has moved into a significant lead over her rival Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic party nomination, according to a Gallup poll.
The national survey of 1,209 Democratic voters gave the New York senator a 49 per cent to 42 per cent edge over Mr Obama. The poll, carried out between 14-18 March, has a 3 per cent margin of error.
Gallup said it was the first statistically
significant lead for Mrs Clinton since just after the Super Tuesday primaries in early February. The two candidates have largely been locked in a statistical tie since then, with Mr Obama last holding a lead over Clinton in a poll on 11-13 March.
New polling data also showed the Republican nominee John McCain leading Mrs Clinton by a slender 48 to 45 per cent margin, with the Illinois senator slightly further behind, at 47 per cent to 43 per cent.
The two Democrats crossed swords on the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. Mr Obama, who opposed the invasion, said Mrs Clinton, who voted for it, could not be trusted to end the conflict. "Ask yourself," he told a campaign crowd, "who do you trust to end a war: someone who opposed the war from the beginning or someone who started opposing it when they started preparing a run for president?"
The Clinton campaign quickly fired back that the opposite was true.
"The reality is that Senator Obama took practically no action to end the war until he started his White House run, while Senator Clinton has been a consistent critic of Iraq for many years," a campaign spokesman said.
