Clintons email and value over replacement scandal
Arent Clintons polling numbers suffering as a result of the scandal surrounding her use of email while secretary of state? Its certainly possible, but its hard to determine cause and effect. There hasnt been the sudden change in ratings you see around historical scandals like Iran-Contra; instead, her favorability ratings have been declining at a steady but relatively slow pace for a long time.
If you squint, you can perceive some acceleration in the downtrend in March, when details of the email scandal were first reported. But there were a lot of other things going on this spring too notably, Clinton was in the midst of launching her campaign. And while Clinton has seen a decline in her polling in areas such as honesty and trustworthiness consistent with the hypothesis that the scandal is affecting her numbers shes also seen a decline in categories like cares about people like you, which would speak to a broader set of challenges.
The reason Im skeptical that the email scandal is the cause of Clintons problems is because its not as though she entered the race with a squeaky-clean reputation. Instead, given how long the Clintons have been in public life and their reputation for playing at the edges of the rules, it might take a fairly bad scandal to capture the publics imagination and produce much value over replacement scandal. Search Google Trends for Clinton scandal1 and youll find a spikes of public interest around an actual or alleged scandal involving the Clintons once or twice per election cycle; the current one does not particularly stand out.