General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Hillary a weak candidate? [View all]StevieM
(10,500 posts)First, it is that much harder to make more gains when you have already gotten back the first round of voters, who are the easiest to flip back to you.
Second, those voters you just got back are easier to lose. Clinton and Trump had been gone up and down in the polls before. It is by no means unreasonable to suggest that HRC would have recovered those voters, especially since Trump tended to say crazy things and behave erratically. He behaved a little better in the final 11 days.
Also, Clinton felt she had to cancel the positive ads she was going to close on and go heavily negative towards the end, due to Comey. That was a mistake, as were other parts of her response to the Comey intervention, but they were mistakes she never should have been forced into the position of making.
Finally, let's not forget that Putin also caused her to slip in the run-up to the Comey intervention. Those voters were more likely to return then people who flipped based on the issues.
We saw back in July how the Comey press conference not only cost her votes, but they prevented her from recovering support, as she surely would have once it was made clear that the claim that she broke the law was a lie.