"How many women would have hung around," said Terrell Spence, 59, a conservative Republican from Centreville, Va. "I guess I don't like that idea of swinging off her husband's shirttails and hanging on during all the adversity because her sole purpose in life is to be the first lady president."

Normally, ambition is considered a positive quality, particularly for a potential presidential candidate. But when you mix it with gender, "it suddenly becomes like something unholy," especially in Clinton's case, said Thomas Schaller, political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "A lot of people have a certain issue with strong, accomplished women."

The right's dislike of Hillary Clinton goes back to her husband's first presidential campaign when she defended him against charges of infidelity and herself as a professional woman, conservative commentator John Podhoretz writes in a new Hillary Clinton book, "Can She Be Stopped?"

Clinton's remark during a "60 Minutes" interview that she wasn't "sitting here — some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette" was viewed by conservatives as mocking traditional marriage as expressed in a song by the popular country music singer.

"Hillary hatred sprang to life at that moment," Podhoretz wrote. "Whatever her marriage was, and is, it certainly did not look like the kind of union traditionalists liked or appreciated."

Conservatives were aroused again when Clinton, facing questions about a legal issue, said, "I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided was to fulfill my profession."

"I thought she shot herself in the foot right then and there because she insulted all the stay-at-home mothers," said LouAnn Gutzman, 50, a conservative Republican from Wrightstown, Wis., and a stay-at-home mom at the time.

But it's not just the right that is unhappy with Clinton. Democrats disappointed by her vote for the Iraq war and efforts to move to the political center have broadened the dislike of Clinton. Liberals fear she is calculating in a way that might lead her to sell out their position, said Democratic pollster Thomas Riehle. The number of favorable opinions of her increased during the Lewinsky scandal when she was generally seen as the victim. But in June, 51 percent say they like her and 44 percent don't — a rather high unfavorable score for someone who might run for president.

Clinton's advisers acknowledge that she is unlikely to win over conservatives and Republicans who intensely dislike her. But they believe she can reverse some negative opinions as she's done in New York in the last six years by letting people get to know her better.

"If you go back to those early polls in New York, you might see that people . . . only knew of her from a national political debate in which she was more symbol than real," said Ann Lewis, Clinton's chief campaign spokeswoman. "But when she goes out and campaigns, meets with people and talks with them about their concerns and her values and what she hopes to do about it, those numbers change."