below the Mason-Dixon Line, “Hillary Clinton” got a favorable rating from 52 percent of all respondents, compared with 45 percent for “Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
In the rest of the country, the opposite was true: 43 percent of all people polled gave “Hillary Clinton” a positive rating and 53 percent rated “Hillary Rodham Clinton” positively.
Clinton has had to face this dilemma in the South before, after her husband, then-Gov. Bill Clinton (D-Arkansas), lost re-election in 1980. At that time, she did not take his last name and was referred to as Hillary Rodham.
When he ran again for the governorship two years later, she changed her name to Hillary Clinton.
“With or without Rodham, 42 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of her and that is a tough place to start a national campaign,”
Poison ivy by another other name...