Bernie Sanders within 12 points of Hillary Clinton

Sure, it’s New Hampshire, a state where you’d expect Bernie Sanders to do well given that he’s been in neighboring Vermont statewide politics since 1991. However, along with the polls, there are other indications that the Clinton campaign is not taking Sanders too lightly.

First, a look at these two polls. The first report from NH1:

A new poll suggests that New Hampshire’s 2016 Democratic primary may be up for grabs.

According to a survey released Tuesday by Suffolk University, 41% of likely Democratic primary voters said if the Granite State presidential primary was held today, they’d vote for Hillary Clinton, with 31% saying they’d back Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The next report from the pollster, Morning Consult:

But in the state that provided Clinton her biggest boost in 2008, the margin is much closer: Among voters who say they will participate in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, 44 percent choose Clinton, while 32 percent pick Sanders, who hails from neighboring Vermont.

In the New Hampshire survey, Biden takes 8 percent of the vote.

True, she’s still leading in New Hampshire but nowhere near the amount she’s leading in Iowa. Sanders know this and he’ll likely spend most, if not all his time in the Granite State hoping for an upset. That will force Clinton to work harder in New Hampshire to avoid an embarrassingly close result, notwithstanding the major embarrassment of a close loss.

There’s another indication of the political threat which is explored in this story from Salon:

More than 200 people packed into a musty, walk-in basement of a local union hall here on Saturday afternoon to hear Bernie Sanders. About halfway through the self-styled socialist’s rousing-if-somewhat-rambling remarks, he took a direct shot at President Obama and a not-so-subtle one at Hillary Clinton. “The time is long overdue for us to begin discussing our disastrous trade policies,” Sanders told the standing-room-only crowd, a failing microphone making his scratchy voice even more so as he railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the global trade accord that has pitted American labor and liberal activists against the president.

The next day, Sanders got his wish—sort of.

At her first major campaign rally in Iowa, Clinton finally entered the discussion about the Asia-Pacific trade deal and the so-called fast-track authority the president wants Congress to give him to help broker it. In her most extensive remarks on the topic to date, Clinton called on Obama to take labor’s concerns seriously while also casting the current House fight that has thrown the deal into limbo as an opportunity, not a problem. “The president should listen to and work with his allies in Congress, starting with Nancy Pelosi, who have expressed their concerns about the impact that a weak agreement would have on our workers, to make sure we get the best, strongest deal possible and if we don’t get it, there should be no deal,” Clinton said in Des Moines.

Clearly her team feels she’s vulnerable on these types of issues where the political base, in this case unions, will be pushing hard for her to take a strong stand against the trade agreement. This is evidence enough that, among every Democrat currently running, Sanders poses the greatest political threat by capturing some of the Elziabeth Warren support.