Guy and Katie have noted the rather alarming collapse Hillary Clinton has seen with one of the main cohorts of her 2016 coalition: women. The former first lady has dropped an astonishing 29 points with Democratic women since July, falling from 71 percent to 42 percent. One of the main reasons why this group is running away from the candidate who could possibly make history by becoming the first female president of the United States is the email server. Women (shocker!) don’t believe Clinton is telling the truth–and that she did “something wrong” when she decided to set up this elaborate system, which by the way, was vulnerable to hacking. Clinton’s miserable messaging strategy in handling this issue has only exacerbated the former problem, which explains the dive Clinton has undergone in the trustworthiness and honesty categories (via Patricia Murphy/Daily Beast) [emphasis mine]:
Perhaps more worrisome, women don’t seem to think she’s telling the truth about her server. Among all female voters, 51 percent in a Fox News poll said Clinton “knowingly lied” about her private server, while 51 percent of women in CNN’s August survey said Clinton did something wrong when she decided to control her email through her own server.Clinton’s slide among her core constituency hasn’t gone unnoticed by her Republican rivals. “It appears that Democratic women are starting to trend the way of the larger electorate,” said Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Republican pollster who is working for the Ted Cruz campaign this cycle. “They don’t trust her, and they don’t see her projecting confidence in herself, in them, or in the future of the country.”
Conway said that from Republicans’ perspective, Clinton would need to outperform Barack Obama’s 56 percent showing among women voters in 2008 in order to win a general election contest in 2016. "Knowing that women will comprise a majority of the electorate and knowing that she will under-perform among men compared to President Obama and President Clinton, she needs to get closer to 58 percent to 60 percent among women and right now she is nowhere near that.”
Again, there’s still time to recover. Even with these abysmal numbers for Clinton, including her trailing opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by ten points in Iowa and 22 points in New Hampshire, she's still favored to win this primary. At the same time, she is on a path to defeat in Iowa, where her support has dropped by a third since June. And she’s still popular with Democrats, which makes for a frustrating situation; the people love you, but they don’t.
Nevertheless, it seems Team Clinton isn’t waiting until this battlefield shifts down past the Mason-Dixon line, where she’s projected to do much better given that Sander’s core, white progressives,will be fewer in number post-New Hampshire.
Nevertheless, she’s back in The Granite State, where she hopes to slow down Sanders’ momentum. Clinton was scheduled to speak in Atlanta today, possibly commenting about the recent CNN/Salem Media debate held Wednesday night, but she cancelled two weeks ago, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Now, they know why. Yet, the Boston Herald noted a problem with Hillary treating these Bern victims; she’s already well known and voters already have a sense of what she stands for on the campaign trial. They seem to be liking the self-described democratic socialist more at present, though that's probably not so shocking.
Still, her biggest problem, said Andy Smith, director of UNH’s Survey Center, lies in trying to shift strategy when she is so well-known. “She is the same candidate as she was in 2008,” Smith said. “and she suffered these sorts of problems in 2008.”
So, crying in cafes probably won’t win over the support needed to push her over the top this year, as it did in 2008.