Hillary wins popularity poll
2007-12-27 20:32
Washington - US Senator Hillary Clinton has narrowly beaten global television celebrity Oprah Winfrey in an annual poll to choose the woman Americans admire most.
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed on Thursday in Pakistan, made it onto the list for the first time, chosen by 2% of respondents as the woman they admire most.
Bhutto had returned to Pakistan in October after several years in exile to contest a parliamentary election scheduled for next month.
Other women in the top 10 were US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (5%); actress Angelina Jolie and first lady Laura Bush, both with 3%; and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who had the same level of support as Bhutto.
US House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, African-American author Maya Angelou and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II rounded off the list, all garnering 1% of Americans' votes.
Clinton, who is the front-runner in the Democratic party's contest to choose a candidate to run for president in next November's election, was chosen by 18% of Americans in the survey conducted earlier this month by USA Today newspaper and the Gallup polling agency, as the woman they admired the most.
Eternal runner-up
It was the sixth year in a row that Clinton topped the annually compiled list of most admired women.
Winfrey, who has been actively campaigning for Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama, was just two percentage points behind the former first lady, with 16% of the vote.
The television presenter is becoming the eternal runner-up in the poll, having finished in second place every year since 1997, with the exception of 2001 when she was in third place - behind Clinton and Laura Bush.
The poll, conducted on December 14-16, asked 1 011 adults in the United States which man and woman "living today in any part of the world" they admired most.
President George W Bush was voted the most admired man in this year's poll - narrowly beating his predecessor in the White House, Bill Clinton.