O'Malley Fares Poorly In Early Presidential Polling

The early prospects for 2016 White House bid for Gov. Martin O'Malley are dim, according to one national poll.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would get 65 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary, according to a poll released last week by Quinnipiac University.

Trailing Clinton is current Vice President Joseph Biden and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo with 13 and 4 percent of the vote respectively, according to the poll.

O'Malley joins Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner at the back of the pack. Each polled with 1 percent of less of the support in the national poll.

If Clinton were to decide not to run, Biden becomes the frontrunner with 45 percent of those polled saying they would support the vice president from Delaware.

Support for O'Malley increases to 3 percent if Clinton stays out of the primary.

"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a rock-solid hold on the hearts of Democratic voters at this point," Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement released with the poll. "If she decides not to run, Vice President Joseph Biden does almost as well as she does against the rest of the field. There is a long way to go until 2016, but none of the other younger potential candidates for the Democratic nomination currently has anything approaching widespread support from party voters."

O'Malley, who is completing the last 18 months of his second and final term as governor, is widely expected to run for president in 2016. Last year, O'Malley set up a national political action committee account called the "Oh Say Can You See" PAC.

He's spend the last two years trying to raise his national profile by traveling, chairing the Democratic Governors Association and pushing for legislative approval of wind-generated electric power, abolition of the death penalty, gun control, same-sex marriage, the Maryland DREAM Act and the gas tax.

During a trip to Israel last month, O'Malley said he remains undecided on a presidential run but plans to "dedicate some more thought time — reflection time — to the question of whether or not I would run in 2016," according to the Washington Post.

That same paper in March reported the results of its own poll that shows Clinton was more popular in Maryland than O'Malley.