By Karen Tumulty September 14 at 12:56 PM
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee last week. (Morry Gash/Associated Press)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Hillary Rodham Clinton is suffering rapid erosion of support among Democratic women — the voters long presumed to be her bedrock in her bid to become the nation’s first female president.
The numbers in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll are an alarm siren: Where 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters said in July that they expected to vote for Clinton, only 42 percent do now, a drop of 29 percentage points in eight weeks.
The period since the last survey coincides with the news that the FBI is looking into the security of e-mails sent over a private server Clinton used when she was secretary of state, as well as an intense media focus on her response to the controversy. The episode has raised questions about her judgment and revived memories of the scandals that plagued the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton, in the 1990s.