Hillary Clinton at the Aspen Ideas Festival last year. (The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A polling edge for Hillary Clinton at the start of the 2016 election cycle has evaporated in Colorado, according to a survey released Thursday.
by Quinnipiac University found that the expected Democratic candidate for president has lost ground to potential Republican opponents in Colorado and Iowa, another swing state, since the group conducted a .
In Virginia, the third state polled by Quinnipiac, she did much better – leading the GOP field in every case.
In Colorado, Clinton is in a statistical tie in Colorado with all her possible competitors including current Govs. Scott Walker and Chris Christie, former Govs. Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee and current U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.
Among the GOP candidates, Paul does the best in Colorado against the former U.S. Secretary of State with a 44 percent to 41 percent edge.
The margin of error in Colorado was 3.3 percent, according to Quinnipiac.
The all-around tie in Colorado is a change from when Clinton led many of her opponents. In that poll, she was ahead of Bush by eight percentage points and Christie by nine percentage points.
Clinton and Paul were statistically tied in that poll too.
A Quinnipiac pollster speculated that one potential explanation for Clinton’s lost lead is that she has been forced in recent weeks to deal with questions and criticism about for State Department business.
“Ominous for Hillary Clinton is the broad scope of the movement today compared to her showing in Quinnipiac University’s mid-February survey,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement.
“It isn’t just one or two Republicans who are stepping up; it’s virtually the entire GOP field that is running better against her,” he added. “That’s why it is difficult to see Secretary Clinton’s slippage as anything other than a further toll on her image from the furor over her e-mail.”
Asked in the poll whether they thought Clinton was “honest and trustworthy,” 56 percent of Colorado respondents said “no” compared to the 38 percent who said “yes.”
That stands on contrast to Bush and Walker — the two Republican candidates in which Quinnipiac posed the same question. Those polled in Colorado considered Bush “honest and trustworthy” by a 41 percent to 36 percent margin and Walker by 34 percent to 26 percent.
The poll was conducted between March 29 and April 7. Nearly 900 Colorado voters were surveyed. In Iowa and Virginia, roughly 950 voters were polled in each state; the margin of error in both was 3.2 percentage points.
