But Clinton still leads the race for the Democratic presidential nomination thanks to a strong showing among voters of color, even as her support among white voters, especially women, has dropped dramatically.
Democratic and Democratic-leaning nonwhite voters have not only stuck with Clinton as their choice to head the party's ticket in next year's general election, but far more of them say she is honest and that they approve of how she's handled the long-running debate of her use of a private email server when she led the State Department.
In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 57 percent of black, Hispanic and other nonwhite voters supported Clinton, versus 31 percent of white voters, a 26-point difference. Overall the former secretary of state leads the primary race with 42 percent of the vote. Sanders, I-Vt., was second with 24 percent, and Vice President Joe Biden, who is still weighing a bid, was at 21 percent.
A majority of Democrats polled - 57 percent - said Clinton is honest, but again the racial difference is stark: 71 percent of voters of color say the former first lady is honest versus 47 percent of whites. On the question of whether they approve of how Clinton handled her emails, 64 percent of voters of color said they did versus 46 percent of whites. Both differences are highly significant in statistical terms, even with fairly small sample sizes of white and non-white Democratic voters (198 and 148, respectively).
If there was something there we would have known it by now," said James Shaw, a truck driver from Waverly, Va., said of the email controversy. "She did something dumb, didn't do it the way it should have been done, but it's not enough to disqualify her from being president. And I believe she will make a good president."
Shaw, 48, said in an interview on Thursday that he supported Clinton at the beginning of the 2008 Democratic primary, but switched his allegiance to Barack Obama after learning more about the first-term senator from Chicago who would become the nation's first black president. He said he voted for Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, during the 1990s. "He's my man!" Shaw said.
That longstanding familiarity among voters of color with the Clintons is one of the reasons that Hillary Clinton is currently doing well with those voters, said Ricardo Ramirez, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame.
He said Latinos and other voters of color "go with what they know and they've had more exposure to her and her husband. They remember the (good) economy when Bill Clinton was in office. All of those things come into play to impact their evaluations."
Ramirez also suggested that voters of color rely on different news sources than mainstream outlets that have focused heavily on Clinton's emails. "It's not a constant, everyday thing like it's been on Fox and CNN or other networks. So if they're not being blasted with all of the negative information, then the default category would be to be neutral" about how important the controversy is to their support of Clinton.
Diane Sumpter, a businesswoman in Columbia, South Carolina, is a die-hard Clinton supporter. She thinks the debate over the emails is "much ado about nothing" and politically motivated.
She takes Clinton at her word that she has turned over all the emails. "For them to continue trying to belittle her and battling over the same issue is nauseating." Sumpter, in an interview on Thursday, said she supported Clinton in 2008, even after Obama got into the race. "I support her because of her intelligence and the issues she's stood for," Sumpter said, citing Clinton's work for the Children's Defense Fund and her unsuccessful effort to bring about universal health care during her husband's presidency.
Some nonwhite voters have concerns about Clinton's trustworthiness (21 percent in the Post-ABC poll). Mary Rogers was among a few dozen black people who attended a Sanders rally in July in Columbia, South Carolina. Nearly 3,000 supporters crammed into a sweltering banquet hall, and several hundred more listened from the hallway, as Sanders spoke for an hour about his vision for free college tuition, mandatory paid family leave and a $15-per-hour minimum wage.
"So far he's the one impressing me," Rogers said afterward. "Hillary? I don't think so. Hillary has some skeletons that I'm leery of." Rogers said she wasn't convinced that Clinton has been completely forthcoming about her emails.
Sanders's insurgent campaign has emerged as one of the political stories over the summer after the relatively unknown self-described socialist democrat was able to draw tens of thousands of people to rallies around the country. Most of Sanders's support has come from disaffected, progressive whites frustrated that the Democratic Party has not been sufficiently liberal on a number of issues, particularly the country's growing wealth gap.
The Vermont senator is currently leading or tied with Clinton in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the first contests of the presidential primary season. Both states have overwhelmingly white populations. South Carolina is the first Southern primary as well as one of the first contests with a large percentage of nonwhite voters; in recent primaries, black voters have made up half of the state's electorate. As a result, it is being watched closely. Clinton currently has a dominant lead in the state, but Sanders has invested heavily in challenging her there. Last week Sanders campaigned with the prominent black scholar Cornel West.
Although he has made overtures to black voters, including addressing concerns about the deaths of unarmed black civilians during encounters with law enforcement officers, the high rate of black unemployment and the impact of institutional racism, he has struggled to gain traction. In the Post-ABC News poll, Sanders was favored by 13 percent of nonwhite voters to Clinton's 57 percent. In other words, the racial gap appears not only to be about Clinton's appeal among nonwhite voters but about Sanders's lack of appeal. (The two are running roughly even with white voters, with Sanders attracting support of 33 percent of voters and Clinton at 31 percent.
If Biden was in the race, he would be the choice of 21 percent of nonwhite voters.
Shaw, the Virginia truck driver, said he had been impressed with what Sanders has been saying on the stump, particularly about income inequality and his call for campaign finance reform. "I totally agree with his message, but I don't see him being elected president," Shaw said, adding that he would like to see Clinton adopt some of Sanders's platform.
Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta who focuses on racial and ethnic politics, said Clinton is the current candidate of choice for voters of color because of they know her and feel they are on politically safe ground with her.
A Post-ABC News poll on the presidential candidates' favorable ratings released earlier this month found that black and Hispanic Americans generally are especially positive toward Clinton, even after taking into account their party and ideological leaning. The Post used a statistical analysis known as regression to look at the independent impact of partisanship, ideology and race all at the same time. It found that partisanship and ideology were big drivers of opinions, but that being black or Hispanic was connected with far higher ratings for Clinton than being white. That overall racial difference is marked among independents, where nonwhites are far more favorable toward Clinton.
And surveys confirm that Clinton is far more familiar to African Americans than Sanders or any other Democratic candidates. Fully 92 percent were able to offer a favorable or unfavorable impression of Clinton in Gallup polling earlier this summer, compared with just 33 percent who had any opinion of Sanders.
"She is a familiar political figure, more familiar to most people than any of the named (Democratic) candidates so far," Gillespie said. "Joe Biden notwithstanding, she's a household name."
Gillespie doesn't see that support softening unless "it becomes very, very clear that Clinton is vulnerable. If it becomes really, really clear that one of other candidates is a viable general election candidate, some minorities might start to defect and place their bets on the winner. But for now Clinton is perceived as the winner."
Scott Clement and Peyton Craighill contributed to this report.
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