Despite Sustaining Hits, Hillary Clinton Remains ‘Formidable’ in 2016 NBC/WSJ Poll

After weeks of scrutiny and tough questions – over her emails and the Clinton Foundation – here’s the bad news for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Her image has taken a hit, according to the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Clinton’s unfavorable rating has ticked up six points since March, and the percentage giving her high marks for being honest and straightforward has declined 13 points from a year ago.

But here’s the good news for her: Despite these hits, Clinton leads the Republican top-tier candidates in hypothetical general-election match ups. And she’s the only 2016 candidate the poll tested who doesn’t sport a negative favorable/unfavorable rating.

“Yes, there are challenges with the Clinton name,” says Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “But she remains a uniquely formidable candidate.”

Hillary bests the GOP competition

In the new NBC/WSJ poll, Clinton’s favorable/unfavorable rating stands at 42 positive, 42 negative (even) – down from 44 percent positive, 36 percent negative in March (+8).

Still, that break-even rating exceeds the fav/unfav scores for Republicans Marco Rubio (22 percent positive, 23 percent negative), Scott Walker (15 percent positive, 17 percent negative), Rand Paul (23 percent positive, 28 percent negative) and Jeb Bush (23 percent positive, 36 percent negative).

Obama’s approval ticks up to 48 percent

Maybe the best news in the poll for Hillary Clinton is the approval rating of the man she’s running to succeed – Barack Obama.

Forty-eight percent of all adults in the NBC/WSJ poll approve of the president’s job, which is up two points from March.

It’s his highest rating in the poll since June 2013.

“President Obama seems to have avoided the slump that plagued George W. Bush after his sixth-year shellacking” in 2006, says Yang, the Democratic pollster.

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