Americans' views on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton have gone under water, nearing an all-time low in ABC News/Washington Post polling. Favorability taps into a public figure’s basic overall image, with as Langer Research details, [4] a negative score indicating thin ice. This last few weeks has seen Hillary Clinton's poll numbers indicate she is on thinner and thinner ice. Clinton’s favorability has been especially uneven, from as high as 67 percent favorable during her tenure as secretary of state to as low as 44 percent in spring 2008 and 45 percent now.
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Clinton was somewhat better rated at roughly this time in the 2008 cycle:
In November 2007 she had a 50-46 percent favorable-unfavorable rating. Barack Obama’s was 51-36 percent, John McCain’s 43-42 percent. All, then, were better off than Clinton, Trump or Bush today. Among other factors – including increasing partisan and political polarization – this was before the economic collapse of 2008 that pushed public frustration into a deep trough from which it has yet to recover in full.
It seems #BlackLiesMatter after all.
Meanwhile, as Politico reports, [6] Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has been at the top of recent polling for the GOP field, is seen favorably by just 37 percent of Americans, compared with 59 percent who responded that they saw him in a negative light. That's actually an increase of 4 points in favorability since July, though the positive sentiment for the business mogul is more divided along racial lines than it was in July.
