01 September 2016

Hillary dropping in the polls

The Washington Post has an article by Aaron Blake about voters' view of Hillary:

Hillary Clinton hit her stride after the Democratic National Convention, riding to a double-digit lead over Donald Trump in some national and swing-state polls, her highest of the year. As of today, though, Americans' views of her have hit a record low.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows forty-one percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Clinton, while fifty-six percent have an unfavorable one.
That's the worst image Clinton has had in her quarter-century in national public life. Her previous low favorable rating this year was in July, when it was forty-two percent, lower than any mark in historical Post-ABC polls, except a few points in the 1990s when a large share of the public had no opinion of her. Her previous high for unfavorable views was in June of 2016, when fifty-five percent disliked Clinton.
Trump, of course, has long been the more unpopular of the two presidential nominees, and he remains so; thirty-five percent of Americans have a favorable impression of him, compared to sixty-three percent unfavorable.
But, if you look just at registered voters, the new poll actually shows Clinton's image is about as bad as Trump's, with thirty-eight percent having a favorable impression and fity-nine percent unfavorable, compared to a thirty-seven percent to sixty percent split for Trump.
Clinton's numbers serve as a reminder that Trump's unpopularity isn't prohibitive, largely because Americans, specifically registered voters, don't much like Clinton either. If it weren't for Trump, in fact, Clinton would be the most unpopular major-party presidential nominee in modern American history.
Perhaps most notably, Clinton's image has declined significantly from just a month ago. After the Democratic convention, Americans were about evenly split: forty-eight percent favorable and fifty percent unfavorable. Interestingly, Clinton's numbers appear to have dropped since that early August poll, mostly in groups that have been very supportive of her:
Her favorable rating among women dropped from 54 percent to just 45 percent.
Among Hispanics, it went from 71 percent to 55 percent.
Among liberals, it went from 76 percent to 63 percent.
It's not clear quite what might have caused Clinton to fall further than ever before. It's likely that she simply got an extended bounce after the convention that has finally faded. It's also possible that adverse headlines last week about the Clinton Foundation and thousands of newly discovered emails from the private email server Clinton used while Secretary of State reinforced the reasons that views of her had been worsening prior to the July conventions.
But, before that convention, it was clear that Clinton was headed in the wrong direction and setting new records for her unpopularity. As I wrote back then, Gallup and CNN polls at the time showed her numbers worse than ever before, and even worse than Trump at the time.
Clinton's image has been on a downward trajectory since her tenure as a highly popular Secretary of State ended in 2013, and the decline continued through the primary campaign. That's largely been obscured by her lead in the horse-race polls, a lead owed to Trump's inferior image and likely Clinton's advantages on her qualifications to serve as President.
But Clinton is keeping this race competitive with her own personal problems. Right now, the voters who will determine the next president don't like her much more than they like Trump
The Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted from 24 to 28 August 2016 among a random national sample of a thousand adults, including users of both conventional and cellular phones. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Scott Clement and Emily Guskin contributed to this post.
Rico says is it just his perception, or is she not aging well?

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