Hillary Clinton has promised throughout her campaign to carry on the torch from the Obama years, pledging to advance the current administration’s most prized policies.
And a new poll shows two-thirds of Americans believe her — with Donald Trump supporters leading the way.
The Pew Research Center asked in its survey released Thursday if voters expect Clinton to “continue Barack Obama’s policies or take the country in a different direction.” Their response — across party lines — was notable.
Sixty-three percent of Clinton backers polled said they expected the nominee to push forward with the Obama agenda. On the flip side, more than 30% from the same cohort said no, they believed Clinton would take the country in a “different direction.”
Enter the Trump voters. When asked the same question, 80% of them expressed confidence that Clinton would follow through and continue Obama’s policies.
That number sticks out when one considers that, asked more broadly in a recent CNN/ORC poll if they considered Clinton “honest and trustworthy,” only 4% of Republicans said yes, compared to 76% of Democrats.
The two sides obviously have different ideas about whether following Obama’s lead is a good thing — 59% of Clinton supporters do, 78% of Trump supporters don’t, according to Pew — but when thinking about how the two sides interpret the candidates’ positions and measure their trustworthiness, this little nugget underlines just how differently Americans perceive not only Clinton and Trump, but some of the core questions animating the campaign.
The survey was conducted August 9 to 16 among 2,010 adults, including 1,567 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.