Voters Doubt Clinton's Honesty About Benghazi

Hillary Clinton is scheduled to testify today before a special congressional committee about the attack in Benghazi that happened while she was secretary of State. Clinton claims the probe is politically motivated, but most voters don't think she's telling the whole story about the incident in Libya three years ago.

A Full Measure-Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Clinton has not been honest in her disclosures and testimony related to the attack in Benghazi in September 2012 that led to the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Just 27% think she has been honest during the investigations. Twenty-two percent (22%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Rasmussen Reports partnered with Sinclair Broadcasting Group on this survey featured on the latest edition of Sharyl Attkisson’s new program “Full Measure”. Tune in to “Full Measure” with Sharyl Attkisson, featuring “Full Measure-Rasmussen Reports” polling.

While it may not come as a surprise that most Republicans (71%) and voters not affiliated with either major party (61%) think Clinton hasn’t been honest, only 41% of voters in her own party think she has fully disclosed what she knows about the Benghazi incident. Twenty-six percent (26%) of Democrats think she hasn’t been honest, while one-out-of-three (33%) aren't sure.

Just 37% of all voters say they trust Clinton.

Voters are more convinced than ever that the Benghazi incident will hurt Clinton's bid for the White House, but they're almost evenly divided over whether the ongoing congressional investigation of the matter is aimed at the truth or is just politically motivated. Again, there is a noticeable partisan divide on the issue.

But Clinton sailed through the first Democratic debate last week with Benghazi a noticeable non-issue.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 28-29, 2015 by Full Measure-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.

In recent months, much of the public controversy surrounding the Benghazi investigation has focused on the discovery of Clinton’s use of a private, non-government email server while she was secretary of State. The FBI is now investigating her use of the private server which is also the subject of several federal court cases. Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters believe Clinton’s use of the private server provider for issues at the highest levels of the U.S. government raises serious national security concerns, and 45% think she deliberately used the private email account to hide things from government oversight.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) think it’s likely Clinton broke the law by sending and receiving e-mails containing classified information through this private e-mail server.

Sizable pluralities of voters of all ages agree that Clinton has been dishonest about Benghazi, but older voters tend to give her the benefit of the doubt more than younger voters do.

Only 30% of men think Clinton has been honest, compared to 23% of women. But women are also twice as likely as men to be undecided on the question.

Just 25% of white voters think Clinton has been honest in the investigation, compared to 34% of black and Hispanic voters. Just 18% of other minority voters agree.

Last year, 72% of all voters said it is important to find out exactly what happened in Benghazi, and 51% believed the Obama administration’s handling of the incident merits further investigation.

Forty-six percent (46%) of all voters - and 24% of Democrats - think Clinton should suspend her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination until all of the legal questions about her use of the private e-mail server are resolved.

Yet despite these issues, most Democrats still think their party's 2016 presidential nomination is Clinton’s to lose.

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

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