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Hillary Clinton’s Bounce Is Turning Into A Sustained Lead Thanks To Trump’s Breakdown

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Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:17 pm

Hillary Clinton’s polling advantage continues to grow after the Democratic convention, as Trump’s bad behavior is taking a convention bounce and turning it into a sustained lead.

Nate Silver of 538 looked at the recent Clinton polling leads:

– Clinton’s smallest lead in any fully post-DNC national survey is five percentage points.1 She achieved that five percentage point lead in several polls, such as this one from Public Policy Polling.

– Her largest lead is 15 points, in a poll from RABA Research. That poll is something of an outlier, though, with most polls showing Clinton’s lead in the 5- to 8-point range.

– Clinton’s largest bounce in any national poll, as measured in comparison to another survey by the same pollster conducted with a full set of interviews after the Republican National Convention, is 13 percentage points. That comes from a CNN survey, which showed her turning a 5-point deficit into an 8-point lead.

– And her smallest bounce in any such survey is from YouGov, which had her lead growing from 2 percentage points to 5 points, a 3-point bounce.

In historical terms, a sustained 7 point lead would leave Clinton one point off of the largest margin of presidential election victory in the last last 20 years (Clinton in 1996 and Obama in 2008 both won by 8 points.) A seven-point win would be nearing landslide territory in our modern era of partisan polarization.

There is some debate over whether Donald Trump’s post-convention bounce actually existed. The consensus is that the Trump bounce was 1-2 points, not the 7-10 points some of the outlier polls suggested. If Trump did get a bounce, it was gone within four days of the Republican convention ending. Democrats have reached the same point after their convention, yet, Clinton’s lead is maintaining or growing.

It isn’t just that Democrats put on a more positive and better convention. What’s happening is that Trump’s attack on the Gold Star Khan family has gotten the candidate and the campaign trapped in a negative news cycle that is feeding and reinforcing Hillary Clinton’s lead.

This is a pattern of Trump behavior that existed all through the Republican primaries. Trump would open his mouth and get himself into trouble, but he was bailed out by the fact that there was always another primary election to win to take attention off of his bad behavior. The problem that the Trump campaign has run into is that there is no upcoming debate or election. Without a something to distract from Trump attacks on the Khan family, the Republican nominee is trapped in a negative news cycle of his own creation.

The Trump campaign lacks the resources and skills to change momentum, so they are stuck in a downward cycle, while Hillary Clinton is building off of the positive momentum gained by the Democratic convention.

Every presidential election contains it’s own inertia and dynamic. The dynamic that is taking shape in 2016 is that Hillary Clinton is running positive and unifying the Democratic coalition that won in 2008 and 2012, while Donald Trump continues to trip over his own two feet and act completely unable to get out of his own way.

Unless something dramatic happens, it is likely that Hillary Clinton will maintain her lead through Labor Day, as her convention bounce is on the verge of becoming a sustained lead over Donald Trump.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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