Florida Sen. Marco Rubio gained ground on Donald Trump in New Hampshire while Hillary Clinton stayed within striking distance of Bernie Sanders, according to a poll conducted days before the state’s all-important primary.
Trump led his Republican rivals with 29 percent of the vote in a Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll released Friday evening. He received 27 percent of the vote in the same poll last month and has led in every poll since he announced his presidential bid in June.
But Rubio, showing the momentum he gained with a strong third-place finish in Iowa last week, vaulted into second place with 19 percent, up 9 points from a month ago and his highest number in any Granite State poll.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich held third place with 13 percent, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was in fourth place with 10 percent.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses on Monday, is stuck in fifth place with 7 percent, the poll found.
On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders led Hillary Clinton, 50 percent to 41 percent, in the Globe/Suffolk poll, holding on to the 9-point lead he showed over Clinton in the same poll in January. An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll last week gave Sanders a 20-point lead over the former secretary of state.
The poll also showed the Democratic race might be a done deal while suggesting Republicans could be in store for surprises come Tuesday.
Only 13 percent of Democrats said they would change their minds before casting their ballots, while 33 percent of Republicans said they could still pick a different candidate, according to the poll.
The candidates spent a snowy Saturday crisscrossing the state to fire up supporters.
Trump, speaking in Portsmouth, vowed the wall he hopes to build on the US-Mexico border would keep drugs from coming into New Hampshire.
“I am going to create borders. No drugs are coming in. We’re going to build a wall,” he said. “They will stop coming to New Hampshire. They will stop coming to our country.”
Rubio, in Salem, rolled out several more endorsements including former presidential foe Bobby Jindal.
And Bush lambasted President Obama’s foreign-policy record while promising to be a level-headed leader.
“We need a president who doesn’t talk a big game. In fact, I would argue that the next president needs to be a little quieter,” Bush said in Bedford.
Sanders, in Manchester, delivered his stump speech on reducing income inequality by increasing the minimum wage, spending more on infrastructure and demanding “that the wealthiest people and the largest corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.”
He then jetted to New York for an appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”
Clinton visited several New Hampshire cities, urging voters not to quit on her despite her poll position. She argued she was better prepared than Sanders to solve the country’s problems.
“There are more kinds of inequality than just those that are furthered by greed and financial interest,” she said at one rally. “We still have racism, sexism, discrimination . . . We have to continue to defend a woman’s right to choose.”
Later in the day in Henniker, Clinton noted, “Anger is a powerful emotion, but it is not a plan.”