A slim majority of Americans who supported Hillary Clinton in last year’s election believe that the sexual harassment and assault allegations against Bill Clinton are credible, according to a newly released HuffPost/YouGov survey.
Hillary Clinton voters say by a 42-point margin, 53 percent to 11 percent, that the accusations against Bill Clinton are credible, with the remaining 36 percent unsure.
The HuffPost/YouGov survey also asked about sexual misconduct accusations made against three other men: Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly and President Donald Trump. Voters across political lines largely agreed that the allegations against Weinstein are credible.
On the rest, there are significant political divides. Hillary Clinton voters are less likely to believe the allegations against Bill Clinton than they are to trust any of the other accusations. Trump voters almost universally find the accusations against Bill Clinton credible, but are far less likely to believe O’Reilly or Trump mistreated women. A 52 percent majority of Trump voters outright dismiss the allegations against Trump.
Polling from the 1990s indicates that Democrats were considerably less concerned about Bill Clinton’s behavior while he was in office. A 1999 Fox News poll found that 79 percent of Democrats said Clinton accuser Juanita Broaddrick’s allegations were “not worth investigating because the alleged event happened 20 years ago,” and that just 27 percent considered the multiple allegations against the president to represent a pattern of behavior on his part, rather than a pattern of behavior by his political enemies.
In a 1998 Time/CNN/Yankelovich Partners survey, 44 percent of Democrats believed that Clinton had made an unwanted advance toward Paula Jones, while 38 percent thought he had not. Since then, Democrats’ concerns about sexual harassment in general have risen sharply.
The HuffPost/YouGov survey also offers a hint of the way partisanship may affect not just responses to individual accusations, but also to the issue of sexual harassment itself.
Not everyone who participated in the HuffPost/YouGov poll saw the same questions. Those surveyed were divided into two groups, with half asked about Bill Clinton and Weinstein, and the other half getting the questions about O’Reilly and Trump.
After the questions about the credibility of the accusations, both groups were also asked a series of questions about workplace sexual harassment, including whether it’s more common for sexual harassment to go unreported and unpunished, or for people to make false accusations.
Trump voters who were asked about the accusations against Weinstein and former president Bill Clinton said by a 26-point margin, 44 percent to 18 percent, that it’s more common for sexual harassment to go unreported or unpunished than it is for people to make false accusations. Those who were instead asked about Trump and O’Reilly were about evenly split, 26 percent to 25 percent, on what pattern was more common.
Hillary Clinton voters in the two groups showed little difference on the question — those asked about Weinstein and Bill Clinton considered unpunished sexual harassment to be a more widespread occurrence by a 74-point margin, while those asked about Trump and O’Reilly said the same by a 79-point margin. But in response to another question, those who were asked about O’Reilly and Trump were 10 points likelier than those asked about Weinstein and Bill Clinton to describe workplace sexual harassment as a “very serious” problem.
Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups:
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Oct. 27-28 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Treereme on November 16th, 2017 at 21:10 UTC »
What part of this data is beautiful? It's some basic statistics and a basic bar graph. Keep this stuff on politics or other subs, it doesn't belong here.
androidTechMom on November 16th, 2017 at 19:25 UTC »
I'm heartened to hear that most Hillary Clinton voters believe the allegations. Me too. There were so many, over many years.
Some people like to point out that his relationship with Monica Lewinsky was consensual, but there was a hell of a power dynamic there. How would you feel if the CEO of your company was requesting blowjobs from interns? Not okay, right?
Power dynamics complicate the nature of consent. It's not fair to say that the less powerful person cannot consent -- the other person's power shouldn't detract from their autonomy. But the powerful person cannot be as certain of genuine, freely-given consent.
Edit: for context, while I'm not exactly a Democrat, I am liberal on most issues. I voted for Hillary Clinton in the general election, donated to her campaign, and even phone banked for a day.
satanicpuppy on November 16th, 2017 at 18:15 UTC »
Eh. They're definitely credible, but we spent millions investigating that fuck, and only found a consensual blowjob.
It's possible that he's just that good at covering his tracks, but it's also possible that credible and actual are two entirely different things.
Edit: Sweet baby jeebus, don't read below this unless you want a double dose of Russian T_D shilling.