Despite Hillary Clinton’s increasing poll numbers, a majority of Americans still give the Democratic presidential candidate a poor rating when it comes to her honesty and trustworthiness.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this week shows that 53 percent of all voters rate Clinton poorly when it comes to her being honest and straightforward, with 42 percent--a plurality--scoring her very poorly in this category.
Meanwhile, only 27 percent of voters give her a good rating for honesty.
At the same time, primary voters from both parties name "honest" and "trustworthy" as the two most important positive words to describes the next President of the United States, according to a graphic from the poll obtained by the Washington Post.
Clinton has faced especially low dishonesty ratings in key swing states as she battles controversy surrounding her use of a personal email account while serving as secretary of state.
Polling released by Quinnipiac University in August indicated that the percentages of voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania who viewed her as not honest and trustworthy were double the shares who believed her to be the opposite.
Questions will continue to circulate regarding Clinton’s use of personal email as the FBI moves forward with its investigation into her server. The government agency seized the former secretary of state’s server after the inspector general of the intelligence community determined that it held emails containing classified information.
Clinton has repeatedly said that she never sent nor received information marked classified on her personal email. While she has apologized for exclusively using a personal email system while working in the Obama administration, she maintains she did nothing wrong.
As Clinton increases her lead in the Democratic primary race after losing ground for several weeks, her biggest competition, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), is giving credibility to the FBI probe into her email.
After defending Clinton during the first primary debate and insisting that Americans "are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails," Sanders offered his support for the inquiries into Clinton’s server during an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week.
"You get 12 seconds to say these things," Sanders said Wednesday of his debate outburst. "There’s an investigation going on right now. I did not say, ‘End the investigation.’ That’s silly. … Let the investigation proceed unimpeded."