Hillary Clinton took a new tack this week when answering questions about her use of a private email account as secretary of state: She took responsibility and admitted she was at fault.

“It clearly wasn’t the best choice,” Clinton said flatly on Wednesday, as she campaigned in Iowa.


On Thursday, the reason for the change in tone came into sharper focus with a stunning new poll illustrating the extent to which voters don’t trust Clinton to tell the truth.

While Republicans have been test-driving attacks against Clinton for a year and a half, no other line of attack has broken through to this degree. The numbers in a new Quinnipiac University poll are striking: More than 3-in-5 voters, 61 percent, think Clinton isn’t honest and trustworthy. Overall, Clinton’s favorability ratings slipped to 39 percent — her lowest rating since Quinnipiac began polling on Clinton after she and her husband left the White House.

When voters were asked the first word that came to their mind about Clinton, the top three replies were indictments of her trustworthiness. The No. 1 response was “liar,” followed by “dishonest” and “untrustworthy.” Overall, more than a third of poll respondents said their first thought about Clinton was some version of: She’s a liar.

In an era of declining confidence in government, it’s not unusual that voters would find a politician less than honest. But the striking reality is that, for Clinton, a lack of trust is the first thing many think of.

“Anyone running for president — that is a pretty fundamental quality you need,” said Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who is also part of the bipartisan team that produces polls for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal.

Interviews with pollsters suggest Clinton has a long way to go to restore her standing among voters, but that it can be done. A perception of untrustworthiness can be difficult to overcome, especially when it’s so pervasive. But Clinton does have other strengths to build on, according to recent polls: Voters admire her leadership, and women believe she cares about them.

“The dichotomy is hard to figure out,” said Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “The numbers show that people don’t think she’s particularly honest or trustworthy. But the numbers also show that she’s in charge, she’s a leader.”

And her 24 years in the public eye can cut both ways: While perceptions of such a well-known figure can be deeply ingrained, polling on Clinton shows substantial swings; and this year, in the heat of a campaign in which Clinton often seems to be running against herself, with her family foundation and email practices receiving intense scrutiny, she’s tumbled to a new low.

Republican opinion specialists are heartened, but not ready to dismiss her chances.

“This will never be a strength — and it very well may be a career-ending problem for her,” said one veteran GOP pollster, referring to Clinton’s credibility problems. “But we’ve got a long ways to go before this plays out.”

“What Hillary Clinton needs in the worst way is somebody to run against,” the Republican pollster added, suggesting Clinton’s image could actually improve if Vice President Joe Biden entered the race. “She will fare best when she’s compared against another candidate, whether that’s a Democrat or a Republican.”

Yang agreed — and said that the chaos created by the large GOP field was also creating a void that was hurting Clinton in the short term.

“On the one hand, it’s great for the Democratic Party that there’s 17 Republicans [in the race],” Yang added. “On the other hand, it does delay when there’s a real contrast.”

Yang said part of Clinton’s decline was inevitable. Her national favorability ratings were only mediocre during her 2008 campaign — even before Barack Obama wrested away the front-runner mantle. Only after she bowed out of the race, and then later accepted an appointment as Obama’s secretary of state, did Clinton’s image rating improve.

But by the time she declared her candidacy, she was back where she started. Her image rating in April, after the email scandal was well underway, was 46 percent favorable and 47 percent unfavorable — better than her current standing, but certainly not overwhelmingly positive.

On the question of honesty and trustworthiness in the April poll, she was well underwater: 38 percent yes, versus 54 percent who said no.

“All of us understood intuitively that [her high rating as secretary of state] was never going to last,” said Yang. “She’s never going to be who she was before she was a candidate, but there’s no reason she can’t recover.”

Many Clinton supporters were struck by the defensive, legalistic tone she has taken in discussing the email controversy, leading many people to believe she had something to hide. Her shift this week from blaming Republican attacks for her problems, to taking responsibility herself, seemed a clear attempt to remedy that perception.

Nonetheless, one of the more troubling aspects of Clinton’s honesty-driven slide in the polls is her strikingly low numbers among white voters. Some Democrats had hoped Clinton’s candidacy could reverse Obama-era losses among whites, particularly white women. But crosstabs provided by Quinnipiac upon POLITICO’s request indicate Clinton faces steep challenges there, too.

Among all whites, only 26 percent said Clinton is honest and trustworthy. Just 3-in-10 white women said she is honest and trustworthy — including only 34 percent of white women with a college degree, a constituency crucial to repairing Democrats’ numbers among whites.

White Democrats lack confidence in Clinton: Only 3-in-5 consider her honest and trustworthy. Her ratings are woeful among white independents: Only 21percent said she’s honest.

Young white voters are also a big challenge: Just 22 percent said Clinton is honest and trustworthy, versus 73 percent who said she isn’t.

Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, won 44 percent of white voters in his 1996 reelection campaign, according to exit polls, en route to capturing 49 percent of the vote overall in a three-way race with then-Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) and independent Ross Perot. By 2012, when Obama bested Mitt Romney, the Democrat’s share of the white vote had tumbled to 39 percent.

Nonetheless, polling history suggests trustworthiness is just one of many measures voters use to assess candidates.

In 2000, Al Gore managed to win the popular vote — but lose the electoral college — despite the fact that exit polls showed voters for whom honesty and integrity were a driving factor overwhelmingly preferred George W. Bush. Gore, on the other hand, was the overwhelming choice of voters who valued experience and intellect.

Bill Clinton is perhaps the most apparent example of the disconnect between earning voters’ trust on a personal level and their confidence as president. When he left office, Clinton’s approval ratings were roughly 10 points higher than his personal favorability ratings. (Clinton’s low favorability going into the 2000 elections prompted Gore to distance himself from the president in that campaign.)

But some pollsters suggest Gore may be a better model for Hillary Clinton than her own husband, whose perception of untrustworthiness was leavened by his folksy rapport with voters.

“Was Bill Clinton perceived as being honest? No, but it didn’t stop his candidacy. But [Hillary’s] not Bill Clinton,” said the Republican pollster. “Likability means a ton, and if you’re unlikable and not viewed as honest, you have a problem.”



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