Weirdest Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories

The United States goes to the polls today to vote for their next president, with Democrat Hillary Clinton enjoying a slight edge over her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

Her campaign has been dogged by its fair share of controversies, most notably the prolonged investigation of her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

But while every career politician has skeletons in the closet, Clinton has also been the subject of dozens of extreme and bizarre conspiracy theories.

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Here are some of the most outlandish.

Clinton has her opponents killed

Rumours that Vince Foster, a senior White House staffer and boyhood friend of Bill Clinton who committed suicide in 1993, was actually a victim of the power-hungry Clintons have been a staple of right-wing talk radio for decades, despite five official investigations confirming he killed himself.

Similar accusations followed the death of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) employee shot dead in a suspected attempted robbery in July. Blogs from both extremes of the political spectrum speculate he "may have been silenced for threatening to expose some kind of massive voter fraud", Inquistr reports. Others suggest Rich was cooperating with hackers leaking DNC emails. The Metropolitan Police Department said there was "no indication that Seth Rich's death is connected to his employment at the DNC".

Clinton has a body double

Conservative media had a field day when Clinton collapsed at the 9/11 memorial in New York while suffering from pneumonia, diagnosing her with everything from Parkinson's disease to multiple sclerosis.

The Democratic nominee re-emerged on the campaign trail a few days later in seemingly rude health. Could it be that she was, as she said, actually in fine fettle? Nope, they said, she must have a body double.

Professional Clinton impersonator Theresa Barnwell was bombarded with tweets suggesting she was standing in for the politician during an appearance in New York. After first joking that "maybe" she was in the city that day, Barnwell then issued an unequivocal response.

Clinton faked a blood clot

In December 2012, Clinton was hospitalised with a blood clot not long before she was due to testify at a congressional hearing into the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Glenn Beck of Fox News was sceptical, however, asking whether it "just a scam so that we didn't talk about [Benghazi]".

He also added: "If she really had some weird thing in the hospital, then it should prohibit her from ever becoming president," reports Mother Jones.

In one of the most bizarre twists of a bizarre election season, Beck, who has built his TV career on whipping up conservative hysteria, has now said he will vote for Clinton, calling her the "moral choice" compared to Trump.

Clinton's campaign manager kidnapped Madeleine McCann

The theory that John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, and his brother Mike were responsible for the kidnapping of Madeleine McCann in 2007 gathered steam on message board 4chan yesterday, with the two men compared to computer-generated renderings of two suspects released by Portuguese police three years ago.

While Clinton's campaign team is highly unlikely to even acknowledge the outlandish claim, it has been debunked by at least one unlikely source – right-wing news blog Regated, which says the similarity to the brothers is "shocking", but "the police sketches are actually just one person".

Pitzer College professor Brian Keeley, a conspiracy theory expert, told the Daily Beast such outlandish theories offer "a deep sense of hope" for their believers as they provide a coping mechanism for those who are "baffled that we've ended up with Clinton and Trump as the Democratic and Republican candidates for president".