WASHINGTON — Lots of Democrats love Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet plenty of Republicans, conservatives and all-important independents can’t stand her, suggesting possible pitfalls for Barack Obama should he make her his vice presidential running mate.
Meanwhile, members of Obama’s vice presidential-vetting team were spotted Monday meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Some voters’ intense dislike for Clinton suggests that besides building support from women and others, she might make it harder for Obama to win over independents, a pivotal swing group in the campaign against Republican John McCain. It also means she might push Republicans and conservatives to vote against the Democrats — or donate money to the GOP — who might otherwise lack motivation to do so because of tepid feelings about McCain.
A substantial 32 percent of independents strongly dislike Clinton, 10 points more than say so about Obama, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll conducted over the past several months. Independents, a group that Obama and McCain won during their party primaries this year, are a quarter of voters in the 2004 election and have been closely contested in every presidential election since 1992.
In addition, 67 percent of Republicans have very unfavorable views of Clinton, 24 percentage points more than feel that way about Obama. Among conservatives the spread is similar — 58 percent say they feel very negatively about her, 18 points more than say so about Obama.
Few conservatives and Republicans are going to vote under any circumstances for Obama, the Illinois senator who clinched the Democratic presidential nomination last week. But both parties will be trying to discern whether putting Clinton on the ticket might in some ways backfire.
“I don’t think I’d like the idea of Hillary Clinton attached to anything,” said Kym Williams, 33, of Knoxville, Tenn., a Republican who’s not sure how to vote in November. “I’m not for a lot of the things she stands for.”
Other groups with significantly stronger negative feelings about Clinton than Obama include whites younger than 30, male college graduates, white men and whites earning at least $100,000 a year.
On the other hand, Clinton is popular with other voters, which could make her an asset to Obama. According to the AP-Yahoo survey, the New York senator is viewed significantly more favorably than Obama by many white Democrats, Hispanics and Catholics. She carried all those groups decisively against Obama in this year’s Democratic primaries, exit polls of voters showed.
The AP-Yahoo phone poll of 2,124 adults was held April 2-June 2, before Clinton quit the race on Saturday. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
On Monday, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Obama operatives Jim Johnson and Eric Holder spent about 30 minutes with the Nevada Democrat in his Capitol office, but he declined to comment further. Caroline Kennedy is the third member of Obama’s group.
