Conflicting polls on Clinton; What gives?

Two respected polls released recently suggest polar opposite storylines about Hillary Clinton.

One suggests she’s weathered recent controversy over her use of private email as secretary of state, and is even beginning to rebound. Another suggests her ratings have suffered as a result.

What gives?

The CBS News/New York Times poll and the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll appear to tell deeply diverging stories, but there are some commonalities in the data that reveal the real story.

Take Clinton’s favorability rating. The CBS/New York Times poll finds the public about evenly split on the former first lady, with 35% holding a favorable view, 36% unfavorable and 28% in the middle. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds almost exactly the same thing: an evenly divided public, with 42% having a positive view and the same share a negative one, and 14% in the middle. Aside from the size of the neutral response, not much difference there.

In this Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya.

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Related gallery Hillary Clinton email controversy

Likewise, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 50% rated Clinton as not “honest and straightforward,” while CBS and The New York Times pegged the number at 45%. Just a slight difference in statistical terms.

So why the dueling headlines?

The differences are more in the point of comparison than anything in the current findings.

In their March polls, these two had divergent results on Clinton’s favorability rating. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll – which was conducted in early March just as the email controversy was emerging and before she responded to the story in a press conference at the U.N. – found views of Clinton tipping positive, 44% to 36% negative, with 19% neutral. Later in the month, once the story had some time to simmer, the CBS News poll found her underwater, with 37% holding an unfavorable opinion and 26% favorable.

RELATED: Inside Clinton’s Benghazi emails

Essentially, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal analysis is comparing Clinton’s ratings now to those just before the story broke, while the CBS/New York Times poll is looking at Clinton’s ratings now compared to the controversy’s immediate aftermath.

It’s the same thing with both polls’ findings on perceptions of Clinton’s honesty. The CBS/New York Times poll is again looking back to that late-March CBS News finding, after several weeks of questions about why she used a private email server, while the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is comparing views of her honesty now to results from a poll conducted last year.

The consigliere - John Podesta, one of the top liberal minds in politics, will serve as Clinton's campaign chairman. A former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton and a top counselor for President Obama, Podesta has the stature to speak truth to power. His influential role in early structural and strategic decisions suggests that he will be a far more hands-on campaign chairman than most.

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The two different starting points yield very different narratives.

Big picture, polling on Clinton yields one overarching finding: As the 2016 campaign gets underway, she’s being viewed as a political figure once again, which is being reflected in her tempered numbers compared to a few years ago when she was a very popular secretary of state. And this much is true in both polls: A significant share of Americans have an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton, and a sizable number have questions about her honesty.

But remember when reading poll analyses, change over time in any individual poll is completely dependent on when the questions were last asked.

Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28, 2016. The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state was the first woman to lead the presidential ticket of a major political party.

Before marrying Bill Clinton, she was Hillary Rodham. Here she attends Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Her commencement speech at Wellesley's graduation ceremony in 1969 attracted national attention. After graduating, she attended Yale Law School.

Rodham was a lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee, whose work led to impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon in 1974.

In 1975, Rodham married Bill Clinton, whom she met at Yale Law School. He became the governor of Arkansas in 1978. In 1980, the couple had a daughter, Chelsea.

Arkansas' first lady, now using the name Hillary Rodham Clinton, wears her inaugural ball gown in 1985.

The Clintons celebrate Bill's inauguration in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1991. He was governor from 1983 to 1992, when he was elected President.

Bill Clinton comforts his wife on the set of "60 Minutes" after a stage light broke loose from the ceiling and knocked her down in January 1992.

In June 1992, Clinton uses a sewing machine designed to eliminate back and wrist strain. She had just given a speech at a convention of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton jokes with her husband's running mate, Al Gore, and Gore's wife, Tipper, aboard a campaign bus.

Clinton accompanies her husband as he takes the oath of office in January 1993.

The Clintons share a laugh on Capitol Hill in 1993.

Clinton unveils the renovated Blue Room of the White House in 1995.

Clinton waves to the media in January 1996 as she arrives for an appearance before a grand jury in Washington. The first lady was subpoenaed to testify as a witness in the investigation of the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas. The Clintons' business investment was investigated, but ultimately they were cleared of any wrongdoing.

The Clintons hug as Bill is sworn in for a second term as President.

The first lady holds up a Grammy Award, which she won for her audiobook "It Takes a Village" in 1997.

The Clintons dance on a beach in the U.S. Virgin Islands in January 1998. Later that month, Bill Clinton was accused of having a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton looks on as her husband discusses the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 26, 1998. Clinton declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." In August of that year, Clinton testified before a grand jury and admitted to having "inappropriate intimate contact" with Lewinsky, but he said it did not constitute sexual relations because they had not had intercourse. He was impeached in December on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

The first family walks with their dog, Buddy, as they leave the White House for a vacation in August 1998.

President Clinton makes a statement at the White House in December 1998, thanking members of Congress who voted against his impeachment. The Senate trial ended with an acquittal in February 1999.

Clinton announces in February 2000 that she will seek the U.S. Senate seat in New York. She was elected later that year.

Clinton makes her first appearance on the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

Sen. Clinton comforts Maren Sarkarat, a woman who lost her husband in the September 11 terrorist attacks, during a ground-zero memorial in October 2001.

Clinton holds up her book "Living History" before a signing in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 2003.

Clinton and another presidential hopeful, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, applaud at the start of a Democratic debate in 2007.

Obama and Clinton talk on the plane on their way to a rally in Unity, New Hampshire, in June 2008. She had recently ended her presidential campaign and endorsed Obama.

Obama is flanked by Clinton and Vice President-elect Joe Biden at a news conference in Chicago in December 2008. He had designated Clinton to be his secretary of state.

Clinton, as secretary of state, greets Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during a meeting just outside Moscow in March 2010.

The Clintons pose on the day of Chelsea's wedding to Marc Mezvinsky in July 2010.

In this photo provided by the White House, Obama, Clinton, Biden and other members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Clinton checks her Blackberry inside a military plane after leaving Malta in October 2011. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a personal email account during her time as secretary of state. The account, fed through its own server, raises security and preservation concerns. Clinton later said she used a private domain out of "convenience," but admits in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails.

Clinton arrives for a group photo before a forum with the Gulf Cooperation Council in March 2012. The forum was held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Obama and Clinton bow during the transfer-of-remains ceremony marking the return of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who were killed in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012.

Clinton ducks after a woman threw a shoe at her while she was delivering remarks at a recycling trade conference in Las Vegas in 2014.

Clinton, now running for President again, performs with Jimmy Fallon during a "Tonight Show" skit in September 2015.

Clinton testifies about the Benghazi attack during a House committee meeting in October 2015. "I would imagine I have thought more about what happened than all of you put together," she said during the 11-hour hearing. "I have lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been wracking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done." Months earlier, Clinton had acknowledged a "systemic breakdown" as cited by an Accountability Review Board, and she said that her department was taking additional steps to increase security at U.S. diplomatic facilities.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders shares a lighthearted moment with Clinton during a Democratic presidential debate in October 2015. It came after Sanders gave his take on the Clinton email scandal. "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails," Sanders said. "Enough of the emails. Let's talk about the real issues facing the United States of America."

Clinton is reflected in a teleprompter during a campaign rally in Alexandria, Virginia, in October 2015.

Clinton walks on her stage with her family after winning the New York primary in April.

After Clinton became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, this photo was posted to her official Twitter account. "To every little girl who dreams big: Yes, you can be anything you want -- even president," Clinton said. "Tonight is for you."

Obama hugs Clinton after he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The president said Clinton was ready to be commander in chief. "For four years, I had a front-row seat to her intelligence, her judgment and her discipline," he said, referring to her stint as his secretary of state.

Clinton arrives at a 9/11 commemoration ceremony in New York on September 11. Clinton, who was diagnosed with pneumonia two days before, left early after feeling ill. A video appeared to show her stumble as Secret Service agents helped her into a van.

Clinton addresses a campaign rally in Cleveland on November 6, two days before Election Day. She went on to lose Ohio -- and the election -- to her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

After conceding the presidency to Trump in a phone call earlier, Clinton addresses supporters and campaign workers in New York on Wednesday, November 9. Her defeat marked a stunning end to a campaign that appeared poised to make her the first woman elected US president.

Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

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