Well, given that he was at 1% it’s hard to see how the debates don’t help him at least a little, despite a mediocre performance. Now a lot of Democrats know who he is, so there’s a choice other than the dishonest candidate and the socialist candidate.
So at best that gets him up to 5%.
yeehaw
It’s a start. He at least needed to get seen as the “break glass in case of emergency if Biden doesn’t run” candidate and I think he at least met that threshold. O’Malley is the only option you have if you’re a Democrat who doesn’t like liars or socialists.
Yes, there are no voids left to fill. Clinton’s no longer vulnerable on the e-mail bullshit that the Beltway culture had created and sustained, thanks to McCarthy and now Sanders too, so there’s no more need for a backup plan. There is no reason for Biden to run now, and no articulatable reason for anyone to want him to, either.
The decisive leadership we need!
So she should be judged honest by the electorate any day now! See her favorables increase! She might even get as high as 42%!
How’s that free fall going so far?
Ask Nate Silver. He called it “death spiral”.
Seriously, are you actually noticing the polls? What about the polling suggests to you that Clinton hasn’t been in freefall for quite some time?
Um… your cite? You might want to read it.
Silver reported on a micro-trend that he expected to end. And it has ended. If that’s the “death spiral” you’ve been so excited about, I hope you’ve got something else to pin your hopes on.
Kevin McCarthy may have saved the second Clinton presidency.
You’re arguing against a claim I never made: that her free fall was ending in her certain defeat.
However, she has been in free fall. There’s just no way to demonstrate that this is wrong using actual data. Her favorables are down 20 points. Her general election polling is down 15 points. Her primary polling is down 25 points.
She’s still the most likely to win the nomination because she started out with such big leads. But she’s now trailing Republican opponents in the general election consistently(and she’s the only Democrat to be trailing), and her “insurmountable” primary lead is now eminently surmountable.
That’s otherwise known as a free fall, or death spiral, as Silver put it. And there is no sign that it has actually hit bottom yet. As Silver points out, her decline has halted, but she has not yet recovered.
I (and Silver) wouldn’t call it a free fall (more like a moderate decline – and the death spiral was hypothetical, not actual yet), and there are in fact signs that she has hit bottom – her latest polling has been trending, slightly, upwards.
As for the general election polling, I think it’s worth as much as it was at this point in '07 or '11 – which is to say it’s worth nothing.
Um, all of it.
Double digit declines across the board are a moderate decline?
Silver pointed out the risk of continued poll decline if Hillary’s news coverage continued to skew negative (which he wasn’t forecasting). The tone of her news coverage has improved, and surprise surprise, her poll decline has halted.
Of course you’re free to imagine that her polls will drop in response to favorable media coverage. That’s one theory, but one that disagrees with the “death spiral” theory (as well as basic common sense).
With Hillary Clinton, favorable media coverage is a very fleeting thing. Especially since she denies them access.
When it’s from “massive, ginormous lead” to “very large lead”, then “yes”. The email stuff hit her a bit, and Sanders’ rise has hit her a bit, and she’s been slowly recovering in the most recent polls. But if it were truly a “free-fall”, then Silver would have her a lot lower than his ~80-90% or so to win the nomination.
That’s still a freefall. A steep decline is a steep decline. The fact that she could afford a steep decline because of her historic lead does not make it any less a steep decline.
You should have spun for Bush 41 in 1992. “His approval has taken a moderate hit since the Gulf War.”
One thing about “free-falls” is that they don’t end. This decline may have just ended, and may even be reversing, according to the latest polls.
McCarthy’s inadvertent honesty may have killed Hillary’s decline.
Unlikely. Things that reflect badly on your opponents don’t necessarily reflect well on you. The temporary ceasefire from the media could simply be because they have other things to report on now thanks to Mccarthy.