A new poll from Quinnipiac University finds that voters in three key battleground states don’t trust Hillary Clinton and prefer three Republican candidates over her in the race for the White House.
“Hillary Clinton’s numbers have dropped among voters in the key swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. She has lost ground in the horserace and on key questions about her honesty and leadership,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll in a release. “On being a strong leader, a key metric in presidential campaigns, she has dropped four to 10 points depending on the state and she is barely above 50 percent in each of the three states.”
It goes without saying that these states are critical to any Democrat plan to win the White House. The poll, conducted over a fortnight in July, interviewed some 1,200 registered voters in each state. Its margin of error is 2.8 percent.
Hillary trails former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Sen. Scott Walker in all three states. Only in Virginia does Hillary crack 40 percent in the head-to-head match-ups. This is a complete reversal from the Quinnipiac poll in April, when she led all three.
Hillary’s challenge in these three states is an existential one; voters don’t trust her. In Colorado, 62 percent of voters don’t trust her. In Iowa and Virginia, 59 percent and 55 percent of voters don’t trust her. As a result, a majority of voters in each state have an unfavorable view of Hillary.
“Do Colorado voters trust Hillary? No, they do not,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the poll. “Do they think she cares about their needs? No they do not.”
Politics, the news cycle and the ins and outs of running a campaign will all effect the race for the White House in the coming months. Outside events, too, will put particular spotlights on the candidates. Questions of honesty, however, are a foundational issue in Presidential politics. If voters simply don’t trust a candidate, everything else in the campaign is academic.
Obviously, the media will exert all its influence to support Hillary. They have, of course, already been doing that. Even the media can’t overcome voter distrust in a candidate, however. Trust is the fundamental issue in any Presidential campaign. If anything it is more acute this election, with so much uncertainty swirling around the world.
The challenge is particularly acute for Hillary because she has nearly universal name recognition. More than 90 percent of voters have an opinion about her and about her honesty. Every other candidate is viewed as “honest” by the voters, and most are still largely unknown to voters, giving their campaigns ample time to introduce them.
The normal Democrat playbook of using the media to destroy the Republican candidate won’t work if the party’s candidate isn’t trusted by voters. Clearly, many ambitious Republican politicians know this, leading to an almost daily announcement of a new candidate in the GOP nomination race.
Hillary cannot win the White House with poll numbers like these.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.