While still hovering above the even mark at 52%, Hillary Clinton’s popularity is down from 70% in December of 2012. Since that time, she has been forced to deal with a number of embarrassing and politically difficult issues such as the Benghazi terrorist attack and other questionable foreign policy endeavors.
Report from Bloomberg:
Hillary Clinton’s popularity continues to slide as she takes on a more political posture and Republicans raise questions about the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Libya on her watch.
Fifty-two percent of Americans view the former secretary of state favorably, down from 56 percent in March and 70 percent in December 2012, according to the Bloomberg National Poll.
The decline means Clinton wouldn’t enter a possible 2016 race as a prohibitive favorite over key Republican rivals. While she still bests them in head-to-head matchups, she doesn’t have majority support against any of them.
The importance of these numbers is going to mean the most to potential Democratic rivals of Clinton in the 2016 primaries. If her polling drops to the point where other Democrats no longer view her as the “inevitable” nominee, it may sway a number of politicians to jump in as opposed to sitting 2016 on the sidelines. I’m thinking Andrew Cuomo, Martin O’Malley, and Elizabeth Warren for starters. Joe Biden is very likely running regardless of Clinton’s poll numbers.
