Who are the 1 percent who've never heard of Hillary?

Call them “the other 1 percent.” They could be standing in line behind us at the grocery store, sitting

beside us at the ballpark or holding up traffic as they jaywalk, blithely responding to political polls on their cell phones. They’re the tiny sliver of registered voters who regularly show up in national surveys as having “never heard of” Hillary Clinton, and even the pollsters don’t know who the heck these people are. Through two terms as first lady, one in the Senate, a historic presidential run and close to a million miles of world travel logged as secretary of state, Clinton has been named the country’s most-admired woman 19 times and been the subject of two decades of nonstop media scrutiny. If she isn’t overexposed, then no one is. So, who are the 1 percent of Americans who have telephones, are apparently registered to vote and yet claim the name Hillary Clinton rings no bells? “They’re a small, select group,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, who had nothing to say about them beyond that. They showed up in polls this month from Fox News and George Washington University, but the Pew Research Center was also at a loss to explain them. “The group is too small to break out and analyze,” wrote a Pew spokeswoman. It’s possible they’re more myth than reality. “The error factor’s 3.2 percent. So they may exist. They may not exist,” said Republican pollster Ed Goas, who co-conducted the May GWU poll. For comparison, about 1 percent of respondents in that poll were also “unsure” of their own age or refused to divulge it. “There’s a certain number of people who go through life clueless,” he said. “Quite frankly, it’s not a big enough group to look at,” said Goas, who nonetheless was game to glance at the poll’s cross tabs — the demographic breakdowns of every answer to every question — and take a few guesses. The “never heard of” responses tick up slightly among ticket splitters, voters in Florida and those who believe “retirement” is the economic issue the next president should focus on. “My sense is that this is older voters who quite frankly are very apolitical,” said Goas, though he cautioned, because of the miniscule sample size, “You just can’t draw any conclusions.” NEW YORK, USA - MAY 28: Bill Clinton, founder of the Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of the United States, addresses at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Annual Partnerships Forum at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on May 28, 2015. (Photo by Cem Ozdel/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) ALSO ON POLITICO Bill Clinton pens letter to foundation donors ANNIE KARNI and KENNETH P. VOGEL There’s also evidence of Hillary obliviousness among the very young. A poll conducted last spring of 18- to 29-year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics found 5 percent of respondents (about 150 people ) had never heard of the woman who was making Whitewater a household name before some of them were even born. The rate was higher among younger millennials and Hispanics, especially those who preferred to speak Spanish, according to the IOP’s head pollster John Della Volpe, who noted the poll was conducted online and not restricted to registered voters. He said some of the respondents may not have been citizens. Given the murkiness of the data, there seemed only one way to prove the existence of these rare birds of the polling world — field work. POLITICO ventured into the teeming throng around Boston’s Faneuil Hall. We started with single men — another group the GWU poll hinted had a high Clinton cluelessness rate — especially those who looked a little lost. “I don’t know what is Hillary Clinton,” protested Martin Reras, 35, camera hanging from his neck, as he looked up from examining a map. But after some slower pronunciation it turned out that Reras, who was visiting from Buenos Aires, did know what Hillary Clinton is. “Ah! The political girl?” Reras asked. Not only do he and his countrymen know her, he said, they like her. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks before presenting The Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards for Advancing Women in Peace and Security, in the Riggs Library at Georgetown University in Washington, Wednesday, April 22, 2015. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) ALSO ON POLITICO Hillary's hair: She's in on the joke ANNIE KARNI Obaid Safi, 31, moved to the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester from Afghanistan in October, but he has already heard of Hillary Clinton. “She was a prime minister?” asked Safi, as he stood outside of a Uniqlo pop-up shop, greeting customers in a mock-kimono. Safi said he’d seen clips of Clinton speaking on BBC News and on YouTube, but that he remains undecided about her. “I wish to find out much more about her life.” A man wearing balloons on his head looked like a good bet, especially when he indicated uncertainty about his age (“It’s about 48.”). But balloon salesman Stephen Uys was quite sure about Clinton. “She’s a professional. She has experience from the State Department. I respect the way she’s made money,” said Uys, who’s appalled by the way “she’s been pilloried by the right” for “that Benghazi bullshit.” Perhaps the 1 percent who claim not to know Clinton is just made up of wise guys, the kind of people who would identify themselves to a reporter as “Tejas Dikshit,” as Tejas Dikshit did while sitting with friends on a bench outside the hall. But after offering several forms of identification, Dikshit, a 24-year-old consultant, proved his name was real. “It’s a fairly common surname in India,” he said, laughing (it is). (He pointed out that the really odd name belongs to the junior senator from Kentucky. “Rand” means prostitute in Hindi, Dikshit said.) And, yes, Dikshit, who cannot vote in the U.S., was familiar with Clinton. Finally, expanding the search yielded a single blank look. “Who?” said Takar Jacques, who had replaced Safi outside of Uniqlo. Jacques, 21, was born in the United States and is pretty sure she’s on the voter rolls. “They made it very important to register to vote. I just kind of didn’t go [vote]. Do you have to?” said Jacques. Her mother was born in Haiti and she cited Facebook and Upworthy as her typical sources of news. She said she’s been keeping an eye on President Obama and that she has come around to support him in the past year as she’s heard him talk about raising the minimum wage and expanding health care coverage — “Things that have to do with me.” But even Jacques, who said she pays little attention to politics, took only took a moment to recall, “Hillary Clinton is a white female woman running for some political position. I think president.” And of course, Jacques had an opinion. “I don’t really like her.” The good news for Clinton is that Jacques is unlikely to vote. Slightly more tuned-in, and therefore perhaps more politically relevant, is that other rare breed: the registered voters — 5 percent in an April Quinnipiac poll — who “haven’t heard enough” about Clinton to form an opinion.