Clinton's White House years become a boon

Her support has risen 15 percentage points since the last nationwide Times/Bloomberg poll in June, while Obama's support has fallen 5 percentage points.

As a leading actor in her husband's presidency, Clinton entered the race for the White House linked tightly to his legacy of personal scandal and political polarization. But today, the Times/Bloomberg poll found, nearly two-thirds of Democrats and nearly half of all voters say Hillary Clinton's famously unsuccessful effort in the 1990s to provide health coverage for all Americans makes her better able now to deal with healthcare as president.

More than 7 in 10 Democrats, and about half of all voters, said they would welcome a White House advisory role for Bill Clinton, who jokes that he would be called "first laddy" if his wife became president.

And 42% of Democrats agreed it was the "right thing" for Hillary Clinton to stick with her husband after his affair with a White House intern, compared with 5% who said it was the wrong choice.

At the same time, the former first lady remains a polarizing figure -- viewed unfavorably by 44% of respondents. But a favorable rating of 48% is relatively high for Clinton.

In the Republican presidential contest, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is favored by 32% of GOP voters -- more than twice that of his closest rival, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, the poll found.

But danger looms for Republicans should they nominate the politically moderate Giuliani: About one-third of GOP voters said they would consider supporting a third-party candidate in the general election if the party nominee supported abortion and gay rights.

That finding comes as some evangelical leaders are threatening a boycott of the GOP next year should Giuliani become the party's nominee.

The survey, conducted Oct. 19-22 and supervised by Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, sampled the views of 1,039 registered voters nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Though the party nominations will be decided on a state-by-state basis, the national findings shed light on the early strength of Clinton and her fellow Democrats in the race for the White House.

Among all registered voters, the New York senator wins hypothetical head-to-head matchups against each of the four most high-profile Republican candidates. For example, Clinton tops Giuliani 47% to 41%, on the edge of the poll's margin of error. She beats the other GOP candidates by larger margins in the hypothetical contests.

Obama also beats all four top Republicans in hypothetical matchups, though his three-point margin over Giuliani is within the poll's error margin.

And on one of the biggest issues of the campaign, Iraq, more voters say they think Democrats would be best at handling the war. The party's 40% to 34% lead on that topic underscores how dramatically President Bush's Middle East policies have reversed the Republicans' long-held advantages on issues of war and peace.

In the Democratic primary contest, Clinton's lead has become strong enough that she is making significant inroads among voters who once were considered Obama's core supporters, including higher-income and college-educated Democrats.

"She's been very resilient," said poll respondent Peter Schwedock, 64, a trial lawyer who lives in Weston, Fla. He said he decided to support Clinton only after watching her campaign over the last six months.

"People are beginning to realize that with eight years as first lady, she was more involved in everything than first ladies have been in the past," Schwedock said.

The recent poll, however, offers some cautions for Clinton.

Nearly one-third of Democratic voters in the poll, including almost a third of Democratic women, say she is "too polarizing a candidate, making it difficult for her to win the November presidential election."