Poll: Hillary Clinton's lead over 2016 Republican hopefuls is slipping

Poll: Hillary Clinton&#039;s lead over 2016 Republican hopefuls is slipping

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last updated 8 January 2015

Hillary Clinton's commanding lead over a crop of possible Republican presidential candidates is slipping, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. Her lead over former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for example, has dropped to 7 percentage points, from 16 in April. She leads Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky 48 percent to 42 percent, down from a 14-point differential in April.

Here's why:

Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, which conducted the survey, attributed the slippage to Clinton's increased visibility in promoting her new book, Hard Choices, and some recent gaffes.

Clinton caused a stir in June when she said that she and former President Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001 "dead broke" and in debt, a statement many potential voters found hard to accept given that both Clintons received millions of dollars in book deal advances and commanded six figures on the speech circuit. [McClatchy]

Analysts have long predicted Clinton's support would begin to dip as she re-entered the political fray.