US News

HILL TOPS DEMS, GOP TIED IN KNOTS: NATIONWIDE POLL

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the national front-runner for the Democratic nod, while the GOP race is a tossup between Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee, a new poll shows.

The new AP-Yahoo! poll shows Clinton snaring 47 percent of support nationwide, with Sen. Barack Obama a distant second, at 25 percent.

John Edwards takes third place, at 13 percent.

Among Republicans, Huckabee and Giuliani are in a statistical tie, taking 22 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

Sen. John McCain is in third place, at 14 percent, while Mitt Romney gets 13 percent and Fred Thompson takes 11 percent.

Officials in charge of the poll said the numbers on the Democratic side have been static since a similar poll in November. But on the Republican side, Giuliani had been the clear leader, at 27 percent, with Thompson getting 17 percent and McCain taking 15 percent.

The poll of 1,821 people was conducted from Dec. 14 to 20, and has a 2.3-point margin of error.