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61% Say It’s Time for Hillary Clinton To Retire

Hillary Clinton is back today with a new book, “What Happened,” to further explain why Donald Trump is president instead of her. But most voters still don’t buy her excuses and think it’s time for her to step off the national stage. 

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 30% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Clinton still has a future in public life. Sixty-one percent (61%) say it’s time for her to retire, up from 55% just after she lost the presidential election to Trump last November.  (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

Half (49%) of voters believe Clinton’s continued presence on the national stage is bad for the Democratic Party. Only 21% say her presence is good for her party, while 23% say it has no impact.

Forty-four percent (44%) say the weakness of her candidacy was the most likely reason for Clinton’s loss last November. Just 11% attribute the loss to the strength of her opponent. Forty percent (40%) still agree with Clinton that outside factors beyond her control were the most likely reason, but that’s down from a high of 44% in May

Democrats remain more supportive than others of their unsuccessful 2016 presidential nominee.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 10-11, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Most voters still believe Clinton is likely to have broken the law in her handling of classified information as secretary of State and disagree with the FBI’s decision to keep secret its files on last year’s Clinton probe.

While most Republicans (59%) and the majority (53%) of voters not affiliated with either major party think Clinton lost because of the weakness of her candidacy, 65% of Democrats blame other factors instead.

Just over half (54%) of voters in her party still think Clinton has a future in public life, little changed from November. Only 38% of Democrats believe the former first lady and Obama-era secretary of State is good for their party, though; 28% say she’s bad for Democrats.

Men believe much more strongly than women than it’s time for Clinton to retire. But even a plurality (42%) of women voters agrees that Clinton’s continued presence on the national stage is bad for the Democratic Party.

Most voters of all ages agree it’s time for Clinton to retire, but older voters believe that more strongly than those under 40.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of blacks see outside factors as the most likely cause for Clinton’s defeat, but only 36% of whites and 41% of other minority voters agree. Even among voters who blame outside factors, just 37% say Clinton’s continued public presence is good for the Democratic Party.

Among those who last December said Clinton’s loss was due to outside factors, 40% named FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the agency was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information while she was secretary of State as the biggest factor. Twenty-one percent (21%) said Russian interference in the U.S. election was the most likely reason for Clinton’s defeat, but nearly as many (19%) blamed so-called “fake news” sites on the internet. Only three percent (3%) said the WikiLeaks disclosures leading up to the election were the most likely reason Clinton lost, while 15% said it was something else not named in the survey.

Last October, 53% of all voters still disagreed with the FBI’s decision not to indict Clinton for her mishandling of classified information. Seventy percent (70%) said the classified information issue was important to their vote for president.

Right after the election, voters by a 48% to 35% margin said the results were more a vote against Clinton than a vote for  Trump.

As recently as April, 61% of Democrats still did not believe that Trump fairly on the election. But 58% believe their party needs new leadership. 

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 10-11, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.

We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence, we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day. If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a daily update newsletter and various media outlets across the country.

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