I’ve been blogging about Hillary Clinton’s weak general election prospects for a couple of years. But I never expected her to tank this early. Check out these numbers:

As the early stage of the race for president heats up, support for Sen. Hillary Clinton appears to be cooling. A majority of Americans now have an unfavorable image of her, a new Gallup poll released today shows. Her current 45% favorable rating is one of the lowest Gallup has measured for her since 1993.

Her lead as frontrunner for the Democratic nod has narrowed to just 31% to 26% over Sen. Barack Obama. Former Sen. John Edwards comes in at 16% and Al Gore 15%.

“The recent decline in her image appears to be broad-based, as it is evident among most key subgroups,” Gallup reports.

In the latest poll, conducted April 13-15, 2007, more Americans say they have an unfavorable (52%) than a favorable view (45%) of Clinton. As recently as February, her favorable rating was 58%.

Sen. Obama and Sen. Edwards each have favorable ratings of 52% and unfavorable ratings of just 30%.

Here’s a plot of Hillary’s favorables since 1993 from the Gallup release:

She’s basically as unpopular as she was in the darkest days of the original anti-Hillary backlash even though no one has attacked her yet. The majority of the public has an unfavorable impression of her and the negative ads haven’t even started. Imagine what would happen after 18 months of primary and general election attacks.

When I worked on a Senate campaign in 2000, we were left for dead when our unfavorables went over 50 percent. How long until Democrats do the same to Hillary?