Poll: Half say they would never vote for Hillary Clinton for president
While she is winning wide support in nationwide samples among Democrats in the race for their party’s presidential nomination, half of likely voters nationwide said they would never vote for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
The online survey of 9,718 likely voters nationwide showed that 50 percent said Clinton would never get their presidential vote. This is up from 46 percent who said they could never vote for Clinton in a Zogby International telephone survey conducted in early March. Older voters are most resistant to Clinton — 59 percent of those age 65 and older said they would never vote for the New York senator, but she is much more acceptable to younger voters: 42 percent of those age 18-29 said they would never vote for Clinton for president.
At the other end of the scale, Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrats Bill Richardson and Barack Obama faired best, as they were least objectionable to likely voters. Richardson was forever objectionable as president to 34 percent, while 35 percent said they could never vote for Huckabee and 37 percent said they would never cast a presidential ballot for Obama, the survey showed.
The Zogby Interactive poll, conducted Oct. 11-15, included 9,718 likely voters nationwide and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 1.0 percentage point.
In a Zogby International telephone survey conducted in March, 46 percent said they would never vote for Clinton. In that survey, she finished in second place, behind Republican Newt Gingrich, a divisive figure who has since announced he would not seek the presidency and was not included in this new online survey. In that earlier poll, 54 percent said they would never vote for Gingrich. This recent survey included only the 17 candidates who were at that time running for President in one of the major parties. Former Vice President Al Gore, who like Gingrich was also included in the earlier Zogby survey of who would never win voters’ support for the White House, was excluded from this latest survey because of his insistence that he has no interest in a run for the presidency.
After the Clintons were caught in the 42nd president's last-minute pardon scandal, Jimmy Carter called them "disgraceful." Robert Reich opined that "Clinton is utterly disgraced." Al Hunt called Clinton the "albatross" of his party who should "drop dead." Al Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile wrote in the New York Times that "It's time to let Bill Clinton go -- go on and live the rest of his life and allow a new generation of Democratic leaders to renew their fight on behalf of working families in America." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert affirmed that "Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing. It's time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose....some of Bill. Clinton's closest associates and supporters are acknowledging what his enemies have argued for years -- the man is so thoroughly corrupt it is frightening."
Editorially in February 2001 the New York Times asserted that "the former president...seemed to make a redoubled effort in the last moments of his presidency to plunge further and further beneath the already low expectations of his most cynical critics and most of his world-weary friends." And the newspaper lamented that it might "never understand the process by which a departing president and his wife come to put sofas and flatware ahead of the acute sense of propriety that ought to go with high office." The New York Observer assessed Hillary's election to the Senate "a terrible mistake," adding that "Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office."
Those are some of the unlovely things said about the Clintons by their friends.