After Thursday’s network morning shows chose to ignore a finding in the latest Quinnipiac poll that voters most associate the word “liar” with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, ABC’s World News Tonight that evening and Friday’s NBC Today finally mentioned the survey. CBS continued to avoid the topic.
On Thursday’s World News Tonight, correspondent Cecilia Vega noted: “Today, a new poll showing voters have some choice words of their own to describe the candidates. Asked the first word that comes to mind about Clinton, people say ‘liar,’ ‘dishonest,’ ‘untrustworthy.’ For Trump, it's ‘arrogant,’ ‘blowhard,’ ‘idiot.’ And the number one word that comes to mind for Bush? ‘Bush.’”
Following the report, fill-in anchor Tom Llamas observed: “Cecilia, this poll is sort of telling because Hillary Clinton is losing some ground?” Vega replied: “Well, yes. She's still far out front in the Democratic primary but she's losing ground on trustworthiness. Six in ten of all voters say they do not find her to be honest or trustworthy. Tom, that shows that e-mail controversy could be hurting her out there on the campaign.”
On Friday’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie began by highlighting findings for the Republican candidates:
Qunnipiac University surveyed registered voters nationwide, did the traditional poll, but then asked them to describe the top candidates, offering any of the words that come to mind for that person. So here we go, for Donald Trump, the most popular descriptions people gave, “arrogant,” “blowhard.” And the word that came up the least, “winner.” Now as for his rival Jeb Bush, it was his last name that made the top of the list, followed by “family,” “honest,” “weak,” and “brother.”
Fellow co-host Matt Lauer followed: “Alright, the top words used to describe Hillary Clinton, ‘liar,’ ‘dishonest,’ and ‘untrustworthy.’” He quickly looked for a silver lining: “But there is some good news for her, the word least associated with Clinton was ‘unqualified.’” He added: “We should also mention there were positive words further down the list for all of the candidates.”
Thursday’s CBS Evening News skipped the poll finding, but on Friday’s CBS This Morning, correspondent Major Garrett did selectively cite the data:
Trump lead his GOP rivals in that Quinnipiac role but he also topped the list of candidates that Republican voters said they definitely would not vote for. And in another potential warning, Trump trailed Democratic opponents with Hispanics by nearly 3:1. And according to the poll the words most associated with him are “arrogant,” “blowhard,” and “idiot.”
Nothing about Clinton being seen as a “liar.”
