Another Report That Shows Comey Elected Trump

Vox released an analysis today of the devastating “Comey effect” which shows pretty conclusively that James Comey cost Hillary Clinton the election. Of course, this piece is likely to be overwhelmed by the Trump press conference and the Sesssions and Tillerson hearings. Vox cites four pieces of evidence to support their conclusion.

The article first shows that states that were largely underpolled in the last week of the campaign showed the greatest variance from the poll averages for that state. According to Vox, “pollsters didn’t get things wrong so much as fail, in some states, to speak to voters after the decisive event had taken place”. Trump gained a massive 2.4 percentage points in the polls after the Comey letter.

Next, a similar dramatic move toward Trump occurred in the national polls after the Comey letter. Nate Silver estimated that move to be close to 3 points. That is a massive move in voter preference in just one week. Similarly, Silver estimated that Comey’s original comments in July prompted a similar, but slightly less massive, move against Clinton. In addition, both campaigns’ internal polling showed that Comey’s letter changed the race.

The third piece of evidence looks at the difference between early voting that occurred before the letter and the election day polls. In states as diverse as Rhode Island and Florida, the drop in Clinton support was huge. In Rhode Island, a solid blue state, Obama had outperformed early voting by 5 points on election day. Clinton underperformed by an enormous 13 points. In Florida, a battleground state, Clinton won the early vote by 4 points but lost on election day by 12 points. In the all important I-4 corridor in Florida, Clinton’s decline was nine points.

Finally, Comey’s letter just fed into the media and Trump campaign narrative suggesting scandals and corruption surrounding Clinton. Amazingly, 79% of voters had heard a lot about Clinton’s emails while only 59% had heard about Trump’s Access Hollywood tape. In the final week of the campaign, the media narrative turned hugely positive for Trump and massively negative for Clinton.

There was only one media event that could create the huge negative movement against Clinton by voters in the last week of the campaign and that was the Comey letter. Much of the explanation of a revolt by the white working class that responded to Trump’s message misses the fact that the states that had a large white working class population were largely underpolled in the last week of the campaign. A more likely explanation for those voters’ choice would be the Comey letter. That is backed up by the fact the Trump’s favorability rating is now at 37% at a time when he should be enjoying the usual post-election honeymoon.

Vox summarizes their findings, saying, “But Comey’s letter is unique for a few reasons. First, it was an intervention by an institution that Americans have largely perceived as nonpartisan…Second, the intervention was almost perfectly timed to impact Clinton at the worst time…Finally, it aligned perfectly with the narrative pushed by Trump – and bolstered by the media’s obsessive coverage of how Clinton handled her State Department email, and the slow-drip release of hacked emails – that Clinton was somehow fundamentally corrupt.” Please read the whole article and see how convincing the case they make is.

It is surprising that this has even become an issue because, according to Comey, “Especially in a public forum, we [the FBI] would never confirm or deny a pending investigation”. The chutzpah in that statement in astronomical. The election of Donald Trump, and possibly even control of the US Senate, was and always will be about Comey, Comey, Comey!