44% of US voters believe Clinton lost election due to ‘outside factors’

A polling company in the United States has reported that more American voters are now convinced that it was the influence of “outside factors” rather than any other reasons for the loss of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential  election.

"A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 44 percent of likely US voters believe the most likely reason Clinton lost the election is outside factors beyond her control," a press release about the poll said on Tuesday.

The latest figure is up from 39 percent when the same question was asked in December.

The survey also indicated that 43 percent of the voters believe that the loss of the then-Democratic presidential front-runner was due to her weakness as a candidate, while just 11 percent thought it was because of the strength of her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

The poll was conducted among 1,000 likely voters between May 3 and 4 with a three-percent margin of error.

Clinton’s team blame FBI Director James Comey over his release of documents against her ahead of the vote as the reason for the Democrat’s unexpected loss to Trump.

Comey angered Democrats late in October by announcing in a letter to Congress that the agency had uncovered new emails connected to the Clinton email investigation.

The move encouraged Trump supporters and depressed the turnout for Clinton on Election Day. Clinton had been leading Trump throughout the campaign in most of the polls except for the last week of the election.

FBI sources revealed on Tuesday that Comey had given an inaccurate report during a Senate testimony regarding Hillary Clinton’s compromising emails last week.

On May 3, Comey testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Huma Abedine, Clinton's aide, forwarded "hundreds and thousands" of emails to the laptop of her husband, Anthony Weiner.

The number was contested by the investigative news website ProRepublica, which cited two sources, including one in law enforcement, claiming that Abedin did forward some emails to her husband for printing but not as Comey referred to as “hundreds and thousands.”

In July 2016, Comey announced that FBI’s investigation regarding Clinton's mishandling of her emails during her tenure as United States secretary of state showed that she had been "extremely careless"; however, Comey recommended that no charges be filed against her.

Comey, also announced that the FBI's second probe had found nothing to incriminate anyone implicated in the case.

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