A strong majority of registered U.S. voters does not believe that Hillary Clinton is honest or trustworthy as the FBI continues its probe into the former secretary of state’s personal email system.
According to a Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday, 60 percent of voters nationally do not label Clinton honest or trustworthy, while only 36 percent trust the Democratic presidential candidate.
Nearly a quarter of likely Democratic primary voters do not view Clinton as trustworthy, and independent voters by nearly a 3-1 margin do not rate the former secretary of state as honest. Majorities of both men and women do not believe they can trust Clinton, and she is also deemed not honest by majorities across all age groups.
In fact, Clinton is only rated more trustworthy than not by three demographic groups: Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, Hispanics, and African Americans.
Clinton’s trustworthy score pales in comparison to that of her primary competition, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who is viewed by 59 percent of U.S. voters as honest. Clinton also has a worst net honesty score than all Republican presidential candidates mentioned in the poll.
Moreover, the former secretary of state is viewed unfavorably by 51 percent of registered voters, including 56 percent of independents. Sanders, in contrast, has an unfavorable rating of 31 percent. Both Clinton and Sanders are viewed positively by 44 percent of voters nationally.
Majorities of voters in general do not believe that Clinton cares about their needs and problems or shares their values.
Clinton has witnessed the decline of her honesty and favorability scores since controversy broke surrounding her exclusive use of a private email system while at the State Department, a matter that the FBI has been investigating since the intelligence community inspector general concluded that emails contained on Clinton’s system contained classified information at the time they were sent.
Clinton’s campaign has maintained that she never sent or received material marked classified on her personal email. The State Department has been vetting and releasing Clinton’s work-related messages to the public over the last several months, and nearly 1,000 emails thus far released have been determined by the agency to now contain classified information.
While Clinton still leads Sanders in a hypothetical primary election matchup by 30 percentage points, more than a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters backing Clinton say they have not yet made up their minds and could change their decisions.