New polls find Hillary under water

Have the “Clinton Cash” scandals and the release of some Benghazi emails hurt Hillary Clinton’s standing with the public? I don’t know. But something has.

Jim Geraghty points to two polls. First, a brand new CNN poll finds that 46 percent see Hillary Clinton favorably, while 50 percent see her unfavorably.

That’s quite a fall from March. Then, Clinton was viewed favorably by 53 percent of CNN respondents. Only 44 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

Clinton also fared poorly in a new Washington Post poll:

Clinton’s favorability ratings are the lowest in a Post-ABC poll since April 2008, when she was running for president the first time. Today, 41 percent of Americans say she is honest and trustworthy, compared with 52 percent who say she is not — a 22-point swing in the past year.

Clinton’s favorability rating has fallen steadily since she left the Obama administration in early 2013. Today, 45 percent see her positively while 49 percent see her negatively [Note: the result is almost identical to CNN’s]. That compares with ratings of 49 percent and 46 percent two months ago.

Just 24 percent have a strongly favorable impression of her — down six points in the past two months — while 39 percent have a strongly unfavorable impression, up four points.

The last result may be the most telling. It seems to me that a candidate viewed strongly unfavorably by 39 percent of the electorate is in a hole.

If Clinton’s decline stems from reports about various scandals, then she can hope that her numbers will creep back up as these stories recede. But I’m betting that there are more scandals where the current ones came from, and probably additional ones from other sources. And, of course, the current ones can be resurrected through campaign ads in the summer and fall of 2016.

If Clinton’s decline stems from her increased visibility now that she’s on the campaign trail, then the only cure is an unpopular GOP nominee.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses