Hillary Clinton is booed at campaign event

By Alex Spillius

Hillary Clinton has been booed by fellow Democrats as a new poll shows she had slipped behind Barack Obama, her main opponent in the race for the party’s presidential nomination.

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During an interview in front of 3,000 Democratic supporters, Mrs Clinton was jeered over her stance on contentious proposals to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens.

	Sen Clinton addresses the meeting in Iowa

Senator Clinton, who addressed the meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, by telephone, was asked whether, if elected President, she would “make a decision to give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship” during her first 100 days in office.

“I have been favouring a plan to citizenship for years,” Mrs Clinton said.

“I voted for it in the Senate, I have spoke out about it around Iowa and the country and in my campaign. And as President, comprehensive immigration reform will be a high priority for me.”

But illegal immigrants would not be granted amnesty and would have to “earn” citizenship, she said, sparking sporadic booing from some Left-wing activists in the audience.

The jeering then spread throughout the crowd, grew louder and continued even after Mrs Clinton hung up the telephone at the end of the interview.

With just a month before the first votes are cast to determine the Democratic candidate, the reception is symptomatic of an apparent growing antipathy toward the former First Lady.

A poll by The Des Moines Register newspaper shows Senator Obama has overtaken Mrs Clinton in Iowa, the first state to vote for its preferred presidential candidate.

Though Mrs Clinton is still considered the leading candidate nationally, another Iowa poll, conducted by the American Research Group, shows support for her among women, the demographic underpinning her campaign, had dropped 10 points in a month.

Mr Obama’s push to become America’s first black president is expected to receive a boost this week, when billionaire television star Oprah Winfrey joins him on the campaign trail.

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