To say Hillary Clinton had a rough week last week would be an understatement. After declaring that half of Donald Trump’s supporters – that is, some 30 million Americans – fall into a “basket of deplorables,” she was seen collapsing at a 9/11 memorial ceremony. After a day’s worth of conflicting information, her staff finally declared that she was suffering from pneumonia and would take the following few days off.
It’s unsurprising, then, that her poll standing took a hit. What was a three-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average as of September 11 was a 0.9 point lead one week later. Her solid 340-198 electoral vote lead had subsided to a narrow 293-245 advantage, with her leads in North Carolina and Nevada – worth a combined 21 electoral votes – being less than a point.
On its face, this looked like atrocious news. I’m not sure that assessment is correct. To be sure, Clinton did not want the polls to tighten. At the same time, this was a particularly awful series of news cycles for her, while Trump had managed to go over a month without reprising some of his more polarizing statements, such as his flap with the Khan family, who lost a son in Iraq. We would expect a big swing in the polls, and there was one.
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