[1]

Throughout her campaign, presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been called crooked, shrill, and generally unlikable. When you've been in the politics game as long as she has, it's inevitable that your haters will come out in full force [2]. But getting to the bottom of why pundits and voters don't like her is trickier than it sounds — for example, certain ideas — like the assertion that she's more of a moderate Republican than a liberal — get repeated without much substantial evidence. Let's break down the main reasons people say they don't like her and how much truth they hold.

1. She's supposedly dishonest.

Due in part to recent high-profile scandals, like the deleted emails [3] and Benghazi [4], Clinton has been dubbed a liar by a large number of American voters. In the case of the emails, Clinton used a private email server when she was secretary of state, leading many to think she was hiding secret information and putting the nation's security at risk. Thanks to extensive media coverage, the emails dominated the national conversation so much that during a Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders said, "Enough with the damn emails [5]." As for Benghazi, terrorist attacks on the US compounds in 2012 in the Lybian city killed four Americans; many blamed Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, for the security failure and for covering up details of the attack. In June of this year, a House Republican-led report was released after a two-year investigation [6] into the Benghazi attacks, and it did not find Clinton to blame.

Other instances point to blatant dishonesty, however. In the 1990s, for example, she gave a dramatic description [7] about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia, which turned out to be untrue. Still, according to the New York Times, Clinton is one of the most honest candidates [8] to run. Over 50 percent of her statements have clocked in as "true" or "mostly true," miles ahead of Donald Trump's seven percent.

For many people, Clinton isn't necessarily a liar but someone who can't stick to one truth — she has flip-flopped on important issues like gay marriage so much that people think she tells them what they want to hear [9] rather than what she actually believes.

2. She's reportedly a racist.

In the '90s, Clinton supported her husband President Bill Clinton's major crime bill [10] that ended up imprisoning thousands of nonviolent offenders from the black and Latino communities. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act instituted polices like the "three strikes" mandatory life sentence for repeat offenders and expanded death-penalty-eligible offenses. Black leaders at the time asked for more surveillance (rather than more punishment), as crime had exploded in lower-income communities, but they were effectively ignored.

At the time, Clinton called low-income youths of color "superpredators," a term that has been called into question [11] again during this election. While her husband made a messy attempt at apologizing [12] for the language, Clinton has since said she regrets using those words and acknowledges the major flaws [13] in the bill.

3. She looks out of touch.

From being late to support gay marriage [14] to her questionable attempts at reaching young [15] and minority voters via social media, Clinton and her social media team appear to have lost their grasp on pertinent issues. Her campaign to appeal to Latino voters with a listicle titled "7 Ways Hillary Clinton Is Like Your Abuela" backfired tremendously and Twitter users called her "out of touch."

lang="en" dir="ltr">ways Hillary Clinton is like my abuela:
She is apparently very much out of touch with culture.

— Mathew Rodriguez (@mathewrodriguez) December 22, 2015 [16]

Clinton's popularity with young voters and her standing on social justice issues are often compared to Senator Bernie Sanders, who, by contrast, is an Internet darling.

4. She may be sponsored by Wall Street.

Throughout her career, Clinton has received a considerable amount of money [17] from bankers, including approximately $7.7 million in fees with her husband from speaking at financial institutions. Many feel that the massive payday she receives from banks majorly influences her decisions in favor of Wall Street [18]. Big banks are acting as a lobby, some say, and Clinton has no choice but to execute their plans. And yet, overall, Clinton's voting history has not demonstrated a bias [19] toward bankers. She also plans to raise taxes on the wealthy [20].

5. She's not really a liberal.

Some maintain that Clinton, despite her overwhelming support for social programs isn't really a liberal politician. One of the major complaints against Clinton is that she voted for the Iraq War, while Sanders opposed it. Another is that she's now against the Trans-Pacific Partnership [21] after first supporting it. Sanders has maintained that the deal is damaging to the everyday working people [22] and only favors multinational corporations; thus leading some to believe that Clinton changed her position [23] only to be more competitive with Sanders and not because she actually believes it to be wrong. Despite all this, according to a study done by Daily Kos, Clinton is the 11th most liberal member of the Senate [24] when considering all her voting history. This ranking is even higher than that of President Barack Obama.