At the start of 2015, the head to head polls offering voters a choice between Hillary Clinton and a named Republican all showed Hillary ahead by margins in the area of 15%. Since then three important things have happened: 1) America learned that while secretary of state, Hillary Clinton violated the federal law by using her own, less secure, email system and that she had destroyed about half of those emails rather than turn them over in response to a subpoena from Congress; 2) America learned that Hillary and Bill used the Clinton Family foundation as a slush fund for her political activities, took tens of millions of secret donations from foreign countries and their agents while considering actions at the State Department that affected those countries; and 3) the campaign began and Hillary hid from both the people and the media. These events have eroded Hillary's level of support in a major way.
The latest example of this phenomenon comes from a Quinipiac poll in three states, namely, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. No one could say for certain, but were Hillary to lose these three states, she would be highly unlikely to win the White House. The poll matches Hillary against eight Republican contenders. In Pennsylvania, Hillary loses to Republicans like Marco Rubio and, on average, gets only 43% of the vote in the eight match ups. In Florida, Hillary's numbers are higher, but she still only gets under 47% of the vote on average. In Ohio, Hillary comes in with numbers very close to the Pennsylvania results. These are terrible results for Hillary. Remember, these are match ups against people like Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie. Those four are either virtually unknown or they have serious problems of their own. For example, in Florida governor Kasich loses badly to Mrs. Clinton, but a huge chunk of the voters did not know who Kasich is. In all three states, Christie had high negatives (even higher than Mrs. Clinton). Nevertheless, when averaging all the results, in the three states, Hillary could not even get 45% of the vote.
The only way to make sense of the latest polls is to conclude that many voters are voting against Hillary rather than for her Republican opponent. That is a disaster in the making for Hillary. If, for example, Marco Rubio is able to project his positive presence to the voters and present a viable alternative to Hillary, his numbers will surely improve. The same is true of other Republicans. The "inevitable" next president Clinton is starting to look more and more like a loser.
Okay, I know that we still have almost a year and a half until election day, but if the past truly is prologue, for Hillary, the ultimate play will be a tragedy.
The latest example of this phenomenon comes from a Quinipiac poll in three states, namely, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. No one could say for certain, but were Hillary to lose these three states, she would be highly unlikely to win the White House. The poll matches Hillary against eight Republican contenders. In Pennsylvania, Hillary loses to Republicans like Marco Rubio and, on average, gets only 43% of the vote in the eight match ups. In Florida, Hillary's numbers are higher, but she still only gets under 47% of the vote on average. In Ohio, Hillary comes in with numbers very close to the Pennsylvania results. These are terrible results for Hillary. Remember, these are match ups against people like Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie. Those four are either virtually unknown or they have serious problems of their own. For example, in Florida governor Kasich loses badly to Mrs. Clinton, but a huge chunk of the voters did not know who Kasich is. In all three states, Christie had high negatives (even higher than Mrs. Clinton). Nevertheless, when averaging all the results, in the three states, Hillary could not even get 45% of the vote.
The only way to make sense of the latest polls is to conclude that many voters are voting against Hillary rather than for her Republican opponent. That is a disaster in the making for Hillary. If, for example, Marco Rubio is able to project his positive presence to the voters and present a viable alternative to Hillary, his numbers will surely improve. The same is true of other Republicans. The "inevitable" next president Clinton is starting to look more and more like a loser.
Okay, I know that we still have almost a year and a half until election day, but if the past truly is prologue, for Hillary, the ultimate play will be a tragedy.
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