At the Women for Women eventyesterday, Hillary Clinton again raised the James Comey letter.
At the time that letter was released, 11 days before Election Day,
many of us were intentionally avoiding watching or citing polls. When
Hillary brought that letter up again in the interview with Christiane
Amanpour, some pointed out that she had since consulted polls and
particularly Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. So, for clarification, here is Nate's analysis of the effect of that letter on the polls from two days before Election Day.
When FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Oct. 28
that he was reviewing additional emails pertinent to the case of
Hillary Clinton’s email server, Clinton had an 81 percent chance of
winning the election according to our polls-only forecast.
Today, her chances are 65 percent according to the same forecast. The
change corresponds with Clinton’s drop in the national popular-vote
lead: from a 5.7-percentage-point lead in our estimate on Oct. 28 to a
2.9-point lead now — so a swing of about 3 points against her.
How much of that can be attributed to Comey? And now that Comey told Congress
on Sunday that the emails on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s computer
won’t change his earlier conclusions about Clinton, should we expect her
numbers to rebound? The cause and effect is hard to sort out. Clinton’s
poll numbers were arguably a bit inflated in mid-October amid a very rough period for Donald Trump. And even before Comey, the media seemed eager for one last twist in the news cycle,
so Clinton may have been due for a period of greater scrutiny one way
or the other — for example, over emails from the Clinton campaign
released by WikiLeaks.
This is the tenth article in a series
that reviews news coverage of the 2016 general election, explores how
Donald Trump won and why his chances were underrated by most of the
American media.
Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress
on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the
existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation”
into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state,
upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls,
imperiling her position in the Electoral College.
The letter isn’t the only reason that Clinton lost. It does not excuse every decision the Clinton campaign made.
Other factors may have played a larger role in her defeat, and it’s up
to Democrats to examine those as they choose their strategy for 2018 and
2020.
But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton’s decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the role that her gender played in the campaign
— is hard to measure. The impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively
easy to quantify, by contrast. At a maximum, it might have shifted the
race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North
Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a
percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably
enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College. Read more >>>>
Yesterday,
Hillary Clinton declared herself a private citizen and part of the
Resistance. #StillWithHer? I sure am! Let's go! ¡Vamos!
En allez! I would follow Hillary Clinton anywhere. I have that much
faith in her. If she is a ReSister, I am too. In 2008, when people
asked me why I was so dedicated to Hillary, my short answer was "Because
she is scary smart, and I need scary smart." Well, things are scary
now, and she is smart. That's my leader.
Edited to add this bulletin from The Boston Globe.
Comey says he doesn't regret disclosing Clinton probe
FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday
that he doesn’t regret his decision to disclose the reopening of the
Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation in the days before the 2016
election.
He told the panel that while the notion that he affected
the election made him "mildly nauseous," concealing that information
would have been “catastrophic.”
To read more, visit: www.BostonGlobe.com.
Can
anyone help me understand why concealing the Trump/Russia investigation
was OK but not disclosing this would have been "catastrophic?"
