(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-28 11:53

- In a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted March 14-16, forty-four percent of those surveyed said they considered Clinton honest and trustworthy while 53 percent did not. By contrast, McCain was considered honest and trustworthy by a 67 percent to 27 percent margin, and Obama was close at 63 percent to 29 percent.

- A Quinnipiac University poll of Connecticut voters found that 47 percent of all voters viewed her unfavorably to 46 percent who viewed her favorably. Obama's favorability rating was 59 to 24 percent and McCain's was 52 percent to 31 percent. A quarter of Clinton detractors in the poll said she was dishonest.

- A Public Policy Institute of California poll in that state today reported that Obama's favorability rating is 61 positive percent to 34 percent negative, McCain's is 49 percent to 45 percent and those with unfavorable opinions of Clinton outnumber the favorables 52 percent to 45 percent.

Obama is not without his own baggage. Fifty-five percent of all voters in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll said the rhetoric of Obama's ex-pastor disturbed them a great deal or somewhat, with 59 percent of white voters and 34 percent of black voters holding that opinion.

Of the 69 percent of voters who saw or heard Obama's speech on race, 55 percent said they were satisfied with his explanation of his association with Wright, while 32 percent were dissatisfied. White voters were satisfied by a 55 percent to 35 percent margin while black voters were satisfied by 77 percent to 9 percent. Forty-seven percent of all voters who saw the speech said Obama had sufficiently addressed the issue but 37 percent said he had not.

In the context of the Wright controversy, about a quarter of voters said they knew too little about Obama's background and views.

And in today's Pew poll, when asked what made them uneasy about Obama, 29 percent said experience and naivety, 21 percent named the Wright controversy, 13 percent said he was "all talk" and not substantive, while 11 percent were uneasy with his ideology and stand on issues.

Another element common to the polls of the last two days is that McCain and whoever is the Democratic nominee will face an electorate that is more pessimistic and negative about the economy and direction of the country than has been the case in years.

Americans are as negative about the economy as they were during the big recession of the early 1990s, Pew reported. Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country is at its highest in any Pew survey since 1993.

In the PPIC California poll, 73 percent of all voters believed the country was heading in the wrong direction, and among them, that view was held by 80 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of independents. Similarly, 76 percent of all adults in California are bracing for bad economic times in the next 12 months, a view shared almost equally among all voter groups.

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