NYT: Hillary Clinton’s Summer of Decline Had an Upside
Hillary Clinton’s Summer of Decline Had an Upside
The Upshot
Lynn Vavreck
A quarter of her May supporters abandoned her over the summer, but she also picked up nearly half that many voters from her rivals. Moreover, a large majority of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, 75 percent, stuck with her throughout the summer despite the rising popularity of Senator Bernie Sanders and the potential candidacy of Vice President Joe Biden.
Mr. Sanders kept 85 percent of his May voters, and Mr. Biden maintained 72 percent of his supporters.
Voters who left Mrs. Clinton over the summer paint a portrait of the kind of voter who is susceptible to appeals from other candidates going into the debate. Those who moved away from Mrs. Clinton were more likely to be young, white, female and college-educated relative to those who stayed with her. Of the 25 percent who left Mrs. Clinton, most switched to support Mr. Sanders (15 percent), while 6 percent moved to Mr. Biden, and 4 percent jumped on board with other candidates or became unsure of their choice.
Other cross-sectional polls have reported Mrs. Clinton’s losses among white Democratic women. The YouGov data show something more nuanced — that the probability of moving to and from Mrs. Clinton at this point is different for men than for women. This gender dynamic seems to have little to do with age, education, income, marital status or interest in public affairs. In other words, it’s happening in addition to the effects from these other things, not because gender is correlated with these characteristics.
One possibility is that women were supporting Mrs. Clinton after her announcement in higher-than-usual numbers because of the prospect of electing the first woman to the White House. Once the excitement of her entrance into the race wore off, some decline among women seems logical. But this doesn’t explain the concomitant gains among men.
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