Hillary Clinton bought home assuming she would win presidency

Hillary Clinton was so confident she would win the presidency that she bought the house next door to her New York home as a base of operatives for the Secret Service.

The Clintons paid nearly $2 million (US$1.6 million) for the three-bedroom in Chappaqua, a small town about an hour from New York City.

That home was intended to house Secret Service agents and other presidential staff, and would also allow agents to shut down the entire street to passing traffic.

Only residents and their guests would be allowed to drive down that street if Clinton had been elected president.

"I know a lot about what it takes to move a president, and I thought I was going to win," Clinton told CBS' This Morning.

"I'm very happy we did it."

The house was bought mere months before the election, which Donald Trump won in an upset that stunned pundits and pollsters.

Shellshocked, Clinton would sit at the dining room table of their spare house to write her memoir, simply titled: "What happened".

Clinton spoke to CBS about being totally unprepared for a loss, and the pain that came from conceding the day afterwards.

"I had not drafted a concession speech. I had been working on a victory speech," she said.

"I just felt this enormous letdown. This loss of feeling and direction, and sadness, and Bill just kept saying, 'That was a terrific speech', trying to bolster me a little bit.

Clinton said she was "gobsmacked, wiped out" after her shock loss.

"Off I went into a frenzy of closet cleaning, long walks in the woods, playing with my dogs, yoga, alternate nostril breathing that I highly recommend, trying to calm myself down.

"And you know, my share of chardonnay."

Clinton described the "out-of-body experience" of attending the inauguration as part of her role as a former First Lady.

"Then (Trump's) speech, which was a cry from the white nationalist gut," she said.

"What an opportunity to say: 'Okay, I'm proud of my supporters but I'm the president for all Americans'. That's not what we heard at all."

The former Secretary of State has ruled out running for president again, though there are still some passionate supporters who are hoping for a second bid.

But many more would prefer Clinton not make a second run, with a Bloomberg poll released in July showing her with a dire approval rating of 39 percent.

Even 20 percent of people who voted for Clinton now have an unfavourable view of her.

It's a far cry from the 70 percent approval rating she had as Secretary of State in 2012, making her one of the most popular politicians in the country.

It's also unusual for voters to have soured on her after her loss. Typically, politicians gain favourability among voters once they have retired from public office.

Yet the poll showed Clinton would have beaten Trump by three percentage points if the election were held again, the same margin she had in November.

However, the electoral college handed Trump a victory in spite of his three-million vote deficit.

That same poll showed former President Barack Obama with an approval rating of 61 percent, gaining ground since leaving the White House.