One year out before the 2016 general election, Hillary Clinton and Ben Carson are tied in a hypothetical matchup, but Clinton leads three other major Republican candidates, according to brand-new numbers from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Clinton is ahead of Republican Donald Trump by 8 points among registered voters, 50% to 42%.
She leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by four points, 47% to 43%.
And Clinton holds a 3-point advantage over Sen. Marco Rubio, 47% to 44%, though that’s well within the poll’s margin of error of plus-minus 3.4 percentage points.
RELATED: Clinton narrowly pulls ahead of Sanders in New Hampshire
But against Ben Carson, who is now leading the GOP horserace in the NBC/WSJ poll, Clinton finds herself in a tied contest, 47% to 47%.
The reason why Carson performs better versus Clinton than the rest of the GOP field is due to Carson’s standing among independent voters.
Carson leads Clinton by 13 points among independents (47% to 34%). That’s compared with Rubio’s seven-point lead here (42% to 35%), Bush’s four-point lead (41%-37%) and Trump’s four-point lead (43% to 39%).
The NBC/WSJ poll also tested Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders against Trump and Rubio, and Sanders outperforms Clinton — though by just a point or two.
Sanders leads Trump by nine points, 50% to 41% (versus Clinton’s eight-point advantage), and he’s ahead of Rubio by five points, 46% to 41% (versus Clinton’s three-point lead).
The live-caller NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Oct. 25-29 of 847 registered voters (reached by landline and cell phone), and it has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.4 percentage points.
Mark Murray