Third think Clinton can win presidency

Two thirds of Americans believe Hillary Clinton will run for president but only a third think she can win, according to a new poll.

Eighty per cent said they did not think Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could make it to the White House in 2008 either.

Some 35% per cent of voters said they liked Clinton more than they did two years ago, while 33% said they liked her less, according to the poll by Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion for New York City’s WNBC-TV.

The survey of 931 voters found that 27% of them were not likely to vote for a woman, no matter which party she was from.

Of that group almost a third said they would not back a female candidate because “women are not up to the job” and 10% said it was because the presidency was “a man’s job“.

Clinton has not declared whether she will run for president in 2008, saying that her focus is on getting re-elected to the Senate this year.

Rice has repeatedly said she has no interest in running for president.

Clinton led the list of potential contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, with 33% of potential primary voters supporting her.

Former vice president Al Gore got 17%, John Edwards was on 16% and John Kerry just 11%.

Among Republicans, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was favoured by 28% of possible primary voters.

Pollster Lee Miringoff, the head of Marist’s Institute for Public Opinion, said gender was a factor in the results.

“It looks like whether you treat them together or separately, it would certainly be an uphill fight for either of them, and clearly part of that has to do with a continuing reluctance on the part of a large number of American voters to think in terms of a woman in the White House,” he said of Clinton and Rice’s chances.