Story highlights
Hillary Clinton credited her win in Nevada to four months of organizing there
Clinton dismissed her loss to Bernie Sanders among Latino voters, saying she did not believe the entrance polls
Hillary Clinton, coming off a hard-fought victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, acknowledged she has work to do in convincing independent voters and others that she’s trustworthy.
“I understand that voters have questions – I’m going to do my very best to answer those questions. I think there’s an underlying question that maybe is really in the back of people’s minds and that is, ‘Is she in it for us or is she in it for herself?’ ” Clinton told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview aired Sunday on “State of the Union.”
“I think that’s a question that people are trying to sort through. And I’m going to demonstrate that I’ve always been the same person, I’ve always been fighting for the same values, fighting to make a difference in people’s lives, long before I was in elected office, even before my husband was in the presidency,” she said.
Clinton narrowly won the Democratic caucuses in Iowa over rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but he handily beat her in the New Hampshire primary by more than 20 points. The former secretary of state credited her staff for the five-point Nevada victory, saying their organization paid off.
“We saw so much great activity the last week and it turned out to be more than enough,” she said.
Asked if she has a problem she needs to address among Latino voters because entrance polls show her losing them to Sanders 53%-45%, Clinton said the actual voting tallies paint a different picture.
“That’s just not what our analysis shows,” she said. “We don’t believe the so-called entry polls are particularly accurate. If you look at the precincts, if you look at where we dominated, there’s a lot of evidence we did well with every group of voter.”
Asked about a potential face-off with Donald Trump, who won the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday, Clinton said she wasn’t looking that far ahead. But she did weigh in when asked about his comments that he would be a “neutral guy” in his approach to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Israel is our partner, our ally,” she said. “I will defend and do everything I can to support Israel. I also believe Palestinians deserve to have a state of their own. That’s why I support a two-state solution, that’s what I’ve worked on (and) I tried to move forward when I was secretary.”