Hillary Rodham Clinton may not be president — but she is more popular than Barack Obama.
The secretary of state has a 62 percent favorable rating — compared to Obama’s 56 percent, according to a new Gallup poll.
The results are based on a Gallup survey conducted during the first four days of October.
Clinton, who lost the Democratic nomination last year to Obama following a bitter primary, said earlier this week that she will never run for president again.
The poll was conducted before Obama was named the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, which Gallup said “could have helped to improve his favorable rating over the 56 percent.”
In the first days after the prize’s announcement, Obama’s presidential job approval rating noticeably increased, but it has since retreated to its prior level, according to Gallup’s daily tracking poll of Obama.
Observers have said Clinton has little influence in the Obama administration — a notion she scoffed at during a recent interview.
“I believe in delegating power,” Clinton told NBC’s “Today” show on Monday. “I’m not one of these people who feels like I have to have my face in the front of the newspaper or on the TV every moment of the day. I would be irresponsible and negligent were I to say, ‘Oh, no. Everything must come to me.’”
Last year, Obama urged donors to contribute to Clinton before he took office as she scrambled to reduce her massive campaign debt.
An appeal on Clinton’s behalf, signed by Vice President Joe Biden, was sent by e-mail to all of more than 3 million donors to Obama’s record-setting fund-raising effort.
Obama promised after Clinton endorsed him to help pay off her $7.5 million debt.