What's the main cause of Hillary's epic downslide?

[bagelman]

Name recognition. This is an outsider year, and people aren't excited about another Clinton or Bush.

[pbrower2a]

E-mail scandal and poor damage control.

It's the poor damage control that begins to scare us about her as a President. Something is going to go wrong, perhaps terribly wrong, in any Presidency.  So how do you deal with it?

 

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

I'd say it's the fact she's run a near non-existent campaign, playing it way too safe by limiting the frequency and size of events, limiting media access to her and by not announcing much policy in comparison to her rival Sanders. She's allowed negative stories about her to dominate, all the while losing voter support to the more engaging/exciting Sanders.

BS. She's on the ground in Iowa far more than Sanders is. Just because she's not planning and publicizing huge rallies doesn't mean she's not campaigning. And she's put out more actual policy proposals than Sanders too. The reason she's down is that the media is so desperate for a Horserace that they're hammering her and hamming up Sanders. It's the same thing they did 4 years ago after the 1st debate with Romney and Obama.

[Kingpoleon]

None of those answers are accurate. She's only going down in popularity because the media portrays her as a dishonest, unethical person in order to create some controversy (this is what the media is good at). If she were treated fairly by the media, she would be polling even better than she was back before the whole "scandal"-chain started.

Christ, you guys are delusional...

You and I are members of the most organized political party in America.

The GOP isn't much better.

[Fuzzy Bear]

She's an awful politician, very stiff and unlikable who already ran once and lost. Basically, she's the Democrat's Mitt Romney.

So pretty much options one and three.

A very good analogy.  Like Romney, Hillary's "liberal" bona fides are deliberately clouded, as Romney's "conservative" bona fides were.

[Col. Roosevelt]

She's an awful politician, very stiff and unlikable who already ran once and lost. Basically, she's the Democrat's Mitt Romney.

So pretty much options one and three.

A very good analogy.  Like Romney, Hillary's "liberal" bona fides are deliberately clouded, as Romney's "conservative" bona fides were.

She's already seen, too, as untrustworthy, a "bitch" and corrupt. I don't know why anyone thought she was a winner. The Clinton brand does not a victor make, as we saw in 2008.

[RR1997]

She's trailing because the so called "liberul media" hates her and has been unfairly portraying her in a negative way. It's as simple as that.

[All Along The Watchtower]

IIRC, she has been losing white voters (including - worryingly for her campaign - white women) at a rapid rate in the polls, and, while she is fairly popular with black and Latino voters, she doesn't have the natural charisma or "coolness" of Obama. Finally, she's not nearly as popular among young voters as Obama was (Sanders seems to be doing well with that demographic)...So it's a combination of losing key parts of her own coalition while not doing as well with key parts of the Obama coalition.

I also think there is a significant element of Clinton fatigue among many voters, which isn't helped by the constant negative news stories about her (whether they have merit or not doesn't really matter for this purpose).  Same reason that Jeb Bush isn't doing so well in his party's primary polling. A growing number of voters are tired of career politicians/the political class/Establishment. Hence, Donald Trump, and (in an obviously different way that I'm not saying is equivalent to Trump), Bernie Sanders.