In the first Rasmussen Reports national polling about the Democratic Presidential nomination since the first quarter fundraising totals were released, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has closed to within five points of New York Senator Hillary Clinton. The new numbers are Clinton 34% Obama 29% with former North Carolina Senator John Edwards holding in third place at 15%. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has carved out a position atop the second tier of candidates, but currently attracts only 4% support.

Obama has exceeded his current level of support only once in the weekly Rasmussen Reports polls. That came three weeks ago when the Illinois Senator temporarily spiked to 30%. It will take another week’s polling to determine if the current result is a lasting improvement for Obama or merely statistical noise.

While Obama and Clinton are the frontrunners among Democrats, Edwards outperforms them when matched against leading GOP contenders. Polling data released today shows Edwards leading GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani. When matched against America’s Mayor, Clinton and Obama are essentially tied. Similar results are found when matching the leading Democrats against Arizona Senator John McCain (R). Clinton and Obama are even with the Republican hopeful while Edwards has an advantage.

When former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is mentioned as the GOP nominee, Clinton is tied, Obama leads by eight, and Edwards has a fourteen point advantage.

A separate survey released last week showed that the possible entry of current New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg into the 2008 campaign as an Independent candidate would drain significant support from the GOP hopefuls. (More Below)

Rasmussen Reports releases national polling data on the Democratic nomination process every Monday and on the Republican race each Tuesday. The current survey of 774 Likely Democratic Primary Voters was conducted April 2-5, 2007. The margin of sampling error is +/-4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Rasmussen Reports continuously updates favorability ratings and general election match-ups for all Democratic and Republican candidates. We also maintain ratings for Members of Congress, Other Political Figures, and Journalists.

Rasmussen Reports also monitors underlying party identification trends and has found a substantial shift away from the GOP over the past six months.

Rasmussen Reports also tracks public reaction to current events and found the public divided in their perceptions of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria.

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Rasmussen Reports was also the nation's most accurate polling firm during the 2004 Presidential election and the only one to project both Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage point of the actual outcome.

During both Election 2004 and Election 2006, RasmussenReports.com was the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had twice as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many as all competitors combined.

Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.