Clinton’s Health Is Just Another Partisan Issue

Democrats aren’t worried about Hillary Clinton’s health, but most other voters feel she may not be physically up to the job.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters are concerned about Clinton’s health if she wins the 2016 presidential election. Forty-nine percent (49%) don’t share that concern. This includes 35% who are Very Concerned about the state of Clinton’s health and 27% who are Not At All Concerned. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

But a closer look finds that while 73% of Republicans and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major party are concerned about the Democratic presidential nominee’s health if she is elected president, just 28% of Democrats agree. Seventy-one percent (71%) of Democrats are not concerned.

Similarly, while 72% of GOP voters believe Clinton’s health issues make her less able to be the president of the United States, 77% of Democrats disagree. Unaffiliated voters are evenly divided.

Among all voters, 43% think Clinton’s health makes her less able to serve as president, but 48% don’t believe that to be true.

This survey was taken following Clinton’s fainting spell at Sunday’s 9/11 ceremony in New York City and after her campaign’s release of a statement saying she is suffering from pneumonia.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 12-13, 2016 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 analysts Amy Holmes  and Fran Coombs are available for interested media. Please call 732-776-9777 ext. 205 for interviews.]

Clinton holds a four-point lead over Trump in Rasmussen Reports’ latest weekly White House Watch survey. It will be interesting to see if Clinton’s health issues impact those numbers when they are updated tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.

Ninety-one percent (91%) of voters who support Clinton in a matchup with Republican Donald Trump do not believe her health issues make her less able to be president. Eighty-three percent (83%) of Trump voters say she is less able to serve.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of Trump’s supporters are Very Concerned about Clinton’s health if she is elected, compared to 48% of Clinton backers who are Not At All Concerned.

Women are slightly less concerned about Clinton’s health than men are. Middle-aged voters are less worried about her ability to serve than those in other age groups.

Among voters who are Very Concerned about Clinton’s health, 87% think those issues make her less able to be the president. Eighty-nine percent (89%) of those who are Not At All Concerned about her health disagree.

Following Sunday’s incident, Clinton’s campaign acknowledged that it has been withholding information about the candidate’s health from the media.  Clinton already has major honesty issues as far as most voters are concerned.

Voters strongly agree that a candidate’s health is an important voting issue, but while most Republicans and unaffiliated voters think the state of Clinton’s health is worth exploring, the majority of Democrats disagree.

In early August, when new questions about Clinton’s health were being raised, 59% of voters said all major presidential candidates should release at least their most recent medical records to the public. That was up dramatically from 38% in May 2014 when questions about her health were first being raised.

Voters continue to strongly believe that the media is more interested in controversy than in the issues when it comes to the presidential race.

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

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