Poll shows majority find Clinton untrustworthy

As the Democratic presidential campaign has persisted, a new poll shows Hillary Clinton losing trust among voters. The latest findings from ABC News and the Washington Post finds that a majority of respondents find the former first lady untrustworthy, compared to a majority who trusted her before the campaign began.

The Post reports:

Her advisers' efforts to deal with the problem -- by having her acknowledge her mistakes and crack self-deprecating jokes -- do not seem to have succeeded. Privately, the aides admit that the recent controversy over her claim to have ducked sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia probably made things worse.

Clinton is viewed as "honest and trustworthy" by just 39 percent of Americans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, compared with 52 percent in May 2006. Nearly six in 10 said in the new poll that she is not honest and trustworthy. And now, compared with Obama, Clinton has a deep trust deficit among Democrats, trailing him by 23 points as the more honest, an area on which she once led both Obama and John Edwards.

Among Democrats, 63 percent called her honest, down 18 points from 2006; among independents, her trust level has dropped 13 points, to 37 percent. Republicans held Clinton in low regard on this in the past (23 percent called her honest two years ago), but it is even lower now, at 16 percent. Majorities of men and women now say the phrase does not apply to Clinton; two years ago, narrow majorities of both did.

Advisers argue that her positive ratings have dipped as she has been defined by her opponents -- a normal campaign occurrence -- and that her honesty problem reflects the pounding she took from Republicans in the 1990s. But the Bosnia incident and the way the campaign handled it have left advisers divided over what a candidate can do after such a steep drop in trust.

Original here