The most frequent words that come to mind when Americans think about Hillary Clinton are “liar” and “dishonest.” That’s according to a new national poll from Quinnipiac that asked more than 1500 registered voters to say the “first word” that comes to mind when they hear the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s name.
The most frequently mentioned word was “liar,” with 178 people mentioning the word. Next on the list are “dishonest” at 123 mentions and “untrustworthy” at 93 mentions. There were some positive words for Clinton mentioned frequently, including “experience” (82 mentions) and “strong” (59 mentions).
The same question was asked about Republicans Jeb Bush and Donald Trump. The most frequent word for Bush was “Bush” (136 mentions) followed far behind by “family” (70 mentions). Trump received much greater variance in the words used to describe him, with “arrogant” leading the pack with 58 mentions, followed by “blowhard” (38 mentions), idiot (35 mentions), and businessman and clown (34 mentions each).
Despite the negative terms for Trump, he remains in the lead in Quinnipiac’s national poll of Republican or Republican-leaning registered voters with 28 percent support. Trump has even support across demographic and identity groups, including Tea Party supporters, white evangelicals, very conservative Republicans, and somewhat conservative Republicans. The New York businessman and reality TV star actually does better than average with self-identified moderate/liberal Republicans.
Behind Trump in the GOP primary is neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who gets 12 percent support. The remaining candidates register in single digits. On the question of who Republicans say they would “definitely not support” for the nomination, Trump also leads with 26 percent saying that of him. Bush comes in second on that metric with 18 percent, followed by 14 percent for both Chris Christie and Rand Paul and 13 percent for Lindsey Graham.
On the Democratic side, Clinton remains in the lead with a plurality of 45 percent, followed by Bernie Sanders at 22 percent and Joe Biden (who is not yet a candidate) at 18 percent.
Read the full results of the poll here.
