Clinton beat house democrats

[BlueSwan]

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but she significantly outperformed house democrats in the 2016 elections.

House republicans got almost 1.4 million more votes than house democrats, while Clinton got almost 3 million more votes than Trump. That's a swing of more than 4.3 million votes.

Maybe democrats shouldn't be so fast to throw her under the bus. 2016 was a really bad showing by democrats in general and she still handidly beat Trump in the popular vote.

[Phony Moderate]

Many voters felt more comfortable voting for their low energy GOP house candidate than for the orange loudmouth and that would have been the case almost regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee was.

[uti2]

She threw them under the bus and was praising Paul Ryan, while ignoring her left-wing base:

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/137093/clinton-campaign-decision-made-may-doom-down-ballot-democrats

Clinton went out of her way to damage the downballot, the DNC told her not to implement this strategy.

[vote for pedro]

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but she significantly outperformed house democrats in the 2016 elections.

House republicans got almost 1.4 million more votes than house democrats, while Clinton got almost 3 million more votes than Trump. That's a swing of more than 4.3 million votes.

Maybe democrats shouldn't be so fast to throw her under the bus. 2016 was a really bad showing by democrats in general and she still handidly beat Trump in the popular vote.

That's a neat stat.  Another with eerily similar margins is that Clinton outperformed Trump by 4.3 million votes in California, while underperforming Trump by 1.4 million votes everywhere else.  I wonder if there is a correlation?

[BlueSwan]

Many voters felt more comfortable voting for their low energy GOP house candidate than for the orange loudmouth and that would have been the case almost regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee was.

That's a reasonable assumption, but a 4.3 million swing is quite substantial. It doesn't go without saying that a different democrat would have been able to achieve the same swing, or better (which would have been needed to win the electoral college).

I think the numbers at least suggests that 2016 was a tough prospect for any democratic nominee. Trump made it competitive by being Trump, but a more agreeable republican would probably have been very tough to beat for any democratic nominee (especially given that we didn't have any with the gifts of an Obama).

I think there is a tendency on these forums to underestimate the innate appeal Trump has to people with a working class habitus and to people with slight authoritarian tendencies. They may say to pollsters that they don't like him, but be drawn to him anyway. I also think there is a very strong tendency to make Hillary Clinton a much worse candidate than she was. And make her campaign in general worse than it was. Sure, they didn't see Michigan and Wisconsin coming, but barely anybody did. We had a ton of discussions about this on the forums. I was one of those who were always concern-trolling about those states here, but the polling was always solid for Clinton there. I think the campaign made other mistakes, but hindsight is perfect and I understand why they took the route that they did.

[uti2]

Many voters felt more comfortable voting for their low energy GOP house candidate than for the orange loudmouth and that would have been the case almost regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee was.

That's a reasonable assumption, but a 4.3 million swing is quite substantial. It doesn't go without saying that a different democrat would have been able to achieve the same swing, or better (which would have been needed to win the electoral college).

I think the numbers at least suggests that 2016 was a tough prospect for any democratic nominee. Trump made it competitive by being Trump, but a more agreeable republican would probably have been very tough to beat for any democratic nominee (especially given that we didn't have any with the gifts of an Obama).

I think there is a tendency on these forums to underestimate the innate appeal Trump has to people with a working class habitus and to people with slight authoritarian tendencies. They may say to pollsters that they don't like him, but be drawn to him anyway. I also think there is a very strong tendency to make Hillary Clinton a much worse candidate than she was. And make her campaign in general worse than it was. Sure, they didn't see Michigan and Wisconsin coming, but barely anybody did. We had a ton of discussions about this on the forums. I was one of those who were always concern-trolling about those states here, but the polling was always solid for Clinton there. I think the campaign made other mistakes, but hindsight is perfect and I understand why they took the route that they did.

Why are you ignoring Hillary's pandering to Republicans? By normalizing them she hurt her own party. Hillary intentionally damaged her downballot. Hillary tried to win without the support of the left.

+ the argument could be made that with the media constantly saying that Hillary 'had it in the bag', this caused a rush to vote downballot to put a check on her (aided by her own statements that 'normal republicans like Paul Ryan were o.k) that wouldn't have happened in normal circumstances, if you look at 2012, Obama held the downballot fine and it was seen as a horse race between Romney and Obama, and demonized Romney on economic grounds.

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

Many voters felt more comfortable voting for their low energy GOP house candidate than for the orange loudmouth and that would have been the case almost regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee was.

That's a reasonable assumption, but a 4.3 million swing is quite substantial. It doesn't go without saying that a different democrat would have been able to achieve the same swing, or better (which would have been needed to win the electoral college).

I think the numbers at least suggests that 2016 was a tough prospect for any democratic nominee. Trump made it competitive by being Trump, but a more agreeable republican would probably have been very tough to beat for any democratic nominee (especially given that we didn't have any with the gifts of an Obama).

I think there is a tendency on these forums to underestimate the innate appeal Trump has to people with a working class habitus and to people with slight authoritarian tendencies. They may say to pollsters that they don't like him, but be drawn to him anyway. I also think there is a very strong tendency to make Hillary Clinton a much worse candidate than she was. And make her campaign in general worse than it was. Sure, they didn't see Michigan and Wisconsin coming, but barely anybody did. We had a ton of discussions about this on the forums. I was one of those who were always concern-trolling about those states here, but the polling was always solid for Clinton there. I think the campaign made other mistakes, but hindsight is perfect and I understand why they took the route that they did.

Why are you ignoring Hillary's pandering to Republicans? By normalizing them she hurt her own party. Hillary intentionally damaged her downballot. Hillary tried to win without the support of the left.

+ the argument could be made that with the media constantly saying that Hillary 'had it in the bag', this caused a rush to vote downballot to put a check on her (aided by her own statements that 'normal republicans like Paul Ryan were o.k) that wouldn't have happened in normal circumstances, if you look at 2012, Obama held the downballot fine and it was seen as a horse race between Romney and Obama, and demonized Romney on economic grounds.

-Yup.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Many voters felt more comfortable voting for their low energy GOP house candidate than for the orange loudmouth and that would have been the case almost regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee was.

That's a reasonable assumption, but a 4.3 million swing is quite substantial. It doesn't go without saying that a different democrat would have been able to achieve the same swing, or better (which would have been needed to win the electoral college).

I think the numbers at least suggests that 2016 was a tough prospect for any democratic nominee. Trump made it competitive by being Trump, but a more agreeable republican would probably have been very tough to beat for any democratic nominee (especially given that we didn't have any with the gifts of an Obama).

I think there is a tendency on these forums to underestimate the innate appeal Trump has to people with a working class habitus and to people with slight authoritarian tendencies. They may say to pollsters that they don't like him, but be drawn to him anyway. I also think there is a very strong tendency to make Hillary Clinton a much worse candidate than she was. And make her campaign in general worse than it was. Sure, they didn't see Michigan and Wisconsin coming, but barely anybody did. We had a ton of discussions about this on the forums. I was one of those who were always concern-trolling about those states here, but the polling was always solid for Clinton there. I think the campaign made other mistakes, but hindsight is perfect and I understand why they took the route that they did.

Why are you ignoring Hillary's pandering to Republicans? By normalizing them she hurt her own party. Hillary intentionally damaged her downballot. Hillary tried to win without the support of the left.

+ the argument could be made that with the media constantly saying that Hillary 'had it in the bag', this caused a rush to vote downballot to put a check on her (aided by her own statements that 'normal republicans like Paul Ryan were o.k) that wouldn't have happened in normal circumstances, if you look at 2012, Obama held the downballot fine and it was seen as a horse race between Romney and Obama, and demonized Romney on economic grounds.

Thank you.  The Clintons have been a cancer to the Democratic Party and I'm glad their empire is falling apart.

[Pennsylvania Deplorable]

That's not too surprising. It's called incumbency. Most incumbents win easily and a majority of incumbents int he house were republican. People have a tendency to think Congress is doing a terrible job but keep sending the same politicians back because "My congressman seems like a nice guy. He's not the problem." or something like that.

If someone could upload a Clinton vs House democrats map, I think you'll notice that many democrat incumbents outperformed her. I know Matt Cartwright, who represents Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Monroe county, and Schuylkill county PA sure did.

[catographer]

According to DKE, there are 23 Clinton/GOP House districts, versus 12 Trump/Dem. So you're right!
If House Dems kept all their current seats and picked up all 23 Clinton/GOP seats in 2018, they'd get 217 seats which is 1 short of a majority. If there's an anti-trump coalition backlash in 2018 that mirrors Clinton's coalition and then some, Dems could win the House.

[Nym90]

This stat speaks more to the weakness of Trump than anything else.

[Virginiá]

I'm not really convinced this less-than-stellar performance is the fault of Clinton's strategy. She did make an effort to decouple Trump from the GOP to attract disaffected moderate/suburban Republicans (going by some of those Romney districts that flipped, did it work?) , but how does that damage Democrats? It's not like Clinton attacked her party. At the end of the day, voters still chose between the two parties, except maybe in the minds of some independents/Republicans, Trump mattered less. It was still Democrats who failed to appeal to them. Plus, downballot Democrats made their own extensive efforts to tie their opponents to Trump.

Now, if you want to argue that just by Clinton being our nominee was damaging, I might agree. Her baggage became the party's baggage, and after 8 years of a Democratic incumbent president whose tenure triggered quite a lot of polarization and animosity, Democrats did not have a lot of room to maneuver. If there was any year where we needed to put up a well-liked and relatively scandal-free candidate, this was it. Evidently even against someone as awful as Trump.

[uti2]

I'm not really convinced this less-than-stellar performance is the fault of Clinton's strategy. She did make an effort to decouple Trump from the GOP to attract disaffected moderate/suburban Republicans (going by some of those Romney districts that flipped, did it work?) , but how does that damage Democrats? It's not like Clinton attacked her party. At the end of the day, voters still chose between the two parties, except maybe in the minds of some independents/Republicans, Trump mattered less. It was still Democrats who failed to appeal to them. Plus, downballot Democrats made their own extensive efforts to tie their opponents to Trump.

Now, if you want to argue that just by Clinton being our nominee was damaging, I might agree. Her baggage became the party's baggage, and after 8 years of a Democratic incumbent president whose tenure triggered quite a lot of polarization and animosity, Democrats did not have a lot of room to maneuver. If there was any year where we needed to put up a well-liked and relatively scandal-free candidate, this was it. Evidently even against someone as awful as Trump.

Bernie supporters had the idea in their heads that Hillary was a republican-lite, etc. so what does she do? She goes ahead and reinforces that notion by reaching out to republicans? She was snubbing voters calling them deplorable, not even wanting their votes, as in the case of say potential crossover dems who might've wanted to vote dem downballot.

It certainly matters with independents. Independents liked Obama's populist appeal against Romney and his economic message, even Al Gore did a better job at holding the democratic downballot:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-down-ballot-republicans-trump-is-too-much-of-a-wacko-bird-to-be-an-albatross/2016/09/27/ede5579e-84e7-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html

Instead, Hillary just made the campaign a series of personal attacks on Trump and told the public that Paul Ryan was a good man who should be supported.

[jaichind]

That's not too surprising. It's called incumbency. Most incumbents win easily and a majority of incumbents int he house were republican. People have a tendency to think Congress is doing a terrible job but keep sending the same politicians back because "My congressman seems like a nice guy. He's not the problem." or something like that.

If someone could upload a Clinton vs House democrats map, I think you'll notice that many democrat incumbents outperformed her. I know Matt Cartwright, who represents Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Monroe county, and Schuylkill county PA sure did.

You got a point there.   But it does not take away from the fact that Trump under-performed the GOP even in places where the Dem congressional candidates should have the advantage of incumbency.  A good example would be MD.  That is a state where the GOP and Dem contested all CD which makes a good apples-to-apples comparison.  In MD Trump lost 60.33%-33.91% but with 8 out of 9 CDs having Dem incumbents the GOP House candidates lost the PV to Dem only 60.43%-35.53% which meant they over-performed Trump by over 1% despite a clear disadvantage of incumbency.  Another one would be NJ where Dems hold 7 out of 12 CD.  In NJ Trump lost 54.99%-41.00% but the GOP House candidates managed to hold the Dems to 52.60%-44.51% in the PV despite a slight Dem incumbancy advantage.  If you look at a lot of CD in CA you see the same thing, Trump under-performing GOP candidates even with a Dem incumbent.  Now CA NJ and MD are poor fits for Trump but it is clear that in metropole suburban areas Clinton is capturing part of the GOP vote.  But that is the whole point:  Large number of GOP voters in Metropole suburban areas voted for Clinton but mostly voted GOP in House races.

In fact out of the races that Dem House candidates won, I found a total of 156 seats where the GOP ran a candidate AND I have access to Trump and Clinton performance  (NC does not have number yet) Out of this 156 such seats Clinton outperformed the Dem candidate in terms of victory margin in 63 out of those seats which is quite impressive.  Out of the races that the GOP candidate won, I found a total of 202 seats where the Dem ran a candidate AND I have access to Trump and Clinton performance (again NC does not have data yet)  Out of this 202 seats Trump outperformed the GOP candidate in terms of victory margin in only 31 out of these seats.  I agree that the missing CD data in NC makes this not airtight but there are plenty of evidence of Clinton over-performance the generic House candidate even after taking incumbency into account.    

In addition there were 37 House Seats the GOP failed to nominate a candidate (a lot of them were in CA where the GOP did not make it into the second round) and only 30 seats where the Dems failed to nominate a candidate.  Had the GOP and Dem been able to nominates in all these seats the GOP PV lead of 0.9% (I include the DC non-voting congressional race to make it apples-to-apples comparison) would be actually larger.   I did a back-of-envelope guess of what that would look like (using the PV share in the Prez election) and concluded that in such a scenario it would have been a GOP House PV victory of around 1.2%

[Vosem]

I'm not really convinced this less-than-stellar performance is the fault of Clinton's strategy. She did make an effort to decouple Trump from the GOP to attract disaffected moderate/suburban Republicans (going by some of those Romney districts that flipped, did it work?) , but how does that damage Democrats? It's not like Clinton attacked her party. At the end of the day, voters still chose between the two parties, except maybe in the minds of some independents/Republicans, Trump mattered less. It was still Democrats who failed to appeal to them. Plus, downballot Democrats made their own extensive efforts to tie their opponents to Trump.

Now, if you want to argue that just by Clinton being our nominee was damaging, I might agree. Her baggage became the party's baggage, and after 8 years of a Democratic incumbent president whose tenure triggered quite a lot of polarization and animosity, Democrats did not have a lot of room to maneuver. If there was any year where we needed to put up a well-liked and relatively scandal-free candidate, this was it. Evidently even against someone as awful as Trump.

Bernie supporters had the idea in their heads that Hillary was a republican-lite, etc. so what does she do? She goes ahead and reinforces that notion by reaching out to republicans? She was snubbing voters calling them deplorable, not even wanting their votes, as in the case of say potential crossover dems who might've wanted to vote dem downballot.

It certainly matters with independents. Independents liked Obama's populist appeal against Romney and his economic message, even Al Gore did a better job at holding the democratic downballot:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-down-ballot-republicans-trump-is-too-much-of-a-wacko-bird-to-be-an-albatross/2016/09/27/ede5579e-84e7-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html

Instead, Hillary just made the campaign a series of personal attacks on Trump and told the public that Paul Ryan was a good man who should be supported.

There are a lot more suburban Republican voters than Bernie supporters out there; in that sense, the strategy made sense. This is a hard thing to say for sure, since this wasn't included in exit polling and polls in 2016 weren't the best, but Hillary had basically gotten all the Bernie voters to support her in 2016. The disaffected Democrats who bolted to vote for Trump mostly did not vote in the 2016 primary (or the 2012 general election, though they did back Hillary in 2008). Consider one of Trump's most shocking pickups, a previously completely safe Democratic working-class area -- Trumbull County, Ohio, which swung from 60/38 Obama to 44/51 Trump. Guess who it voted for in the primary? Sanders, right?

Nope. It voted for Hillary Clinton, 54/45. The idea that the people Trump gained off of Obama were Berniecrats isn't supported anywhere. They were already disassociated from the Democratic Party.

[jaichind]

Many voters felt more comfortable voting for their low energy GOP house candidate than for the orange loudmouth and that would have been the case almost regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee was.

Yes, but if Sanders where the Dem candidate all these voters which are all concentrated in higher income metropole suburban counties would go Trump which would have hurt the Dem Prez ballot in places like CO VA and PA.

[uti2]

I'm not really convinced this less-than-stellar performance is the fault of Clinton's strategy. She did make an effort to decouple Trump from the GOP to attract disaffected moderate/suburban Republicans (going by some of those Romney districts that flipped, did it work?) , but how does that damage Democrats? It's not like Clinton attacked her party. At the end of the day, voters still chose between the two parties, except maybe in the minds of some independents/Republicans, Trump mattered less. It was still Democrats who failed to appeal to them. Plus, downballot Democrats made their own extensive efforts to tie their opponents to Trump.

Now, if you want to argue that just by Clinton being our nominee was damaging, I might agree. Her baggage became the party's baggage, and after 8 years of a Democratic incumbent president whose tenure triggered quite a lot of polarization and animosity, Democrats did not have a lot of room to maneuver. If there was any year where we needed to put up a well-liked and relatively scandal-free candidate, this was it. Evidently even against someone as awful as Trump.

Bernie supporters had the idea in their heads that Hillary was a republican-lite, etc. so what does she do? She goes ahead and reinforces that notion by reaching out to republicans? She was snubbing voters calling them deplorable, not even wanting their votes, as in the case of say potential crossover dems who might've wanted to vote dem downballot.

It certainly matters with independents. Independents liked Obama's populist appeal against Romney and his economic message, even Al Gore did a better job at holding the democratic downballot:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-down-ballot-republicans-trump-is-too-much-of-a-wacko-bird-to-be-an-albatross/2016/09/27/ede5579e-84e7-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html

Instead, Hillary just made the campaign a series of personal attacks on Trump and told the public that Paul Ryan was a good man who should be supported.

 The disaffected Democrats who bolted to vote for Trump mostly did not vote in the 2016 primary (or the 2012 general election, though they did back Hillary in 2008)

Provided this is true, there's no reason why Hillary should've went out of her way to demonize them instead of trying to court their support for the downballot, instead she reached out to republicans who were less likely to switch their downballot preferences. After all, if the last time they voted was in 2006/2008, then they were in part responsible for the dem waves in those years.

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

I'm not really convinced this less-than-stellar performance is the fault of Clinton's strategy. She did make an effort to decouple Trump from the GOP to attract disaffected moderate/suburban Republicans (going by some of those Romney districts that flipped, did it work?) , but how does that damage Democrats? It's not like Clinton attacked her party. At the end of the day, voters still chose between the two parties, except maybe in the minds of some independents/Republicans, Trump mattered less. It was still Democrats who failed to appeal to them. Plus, downballot Democrats made their own extensive efforts to tie their opponents to Trump.

Now, if you want to argue that just by Clinton being our nominee was damaging, I might agree. Her baggage became the party's baggage, and after 8 years of a Democratic incumbent president whose tenure triggered quite a lot of polarization and animosity, Democrats did not have a lot of room to maneuver. If there was any year where we needed to put up a well-liked and relatively scandal-free candidate, this was it. Evidently even against someone as awful as Trump.

Bernie supporters had the idea in their heads that Hillary was a republican-lite, etc. so what does she do? She goes ahead and reinforces that notion by reaching out to republicans? She was snubbing voters calling them deplorable, not even wanting their votes, as in the case of say potential crossover dems who might've wanted to vote dem downballot.

It certainly matters with independents. Independents liked Obama's populist appeal against Romney and his economic message, even Al Gore did a better job at holding the democratic downballot:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-down-ballot-republicans-trump-is-too-much-of-a-wacko-bird-to-be-an-albatross/2016/09/27/ede5579e-84e7-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html

Instead, Hillary just made the campaign a series of personal attacks on Trump and told the public that Paul Ryan was a good man who should be supported.

There are a lot more suburban Republican voters than Bernie supporters out there; in that sense, the strategy made sense. This is a hard thing to say for sure, since this wasn't included in exit polling and polls in 2016 weren't the best, but Hillary had basically gotten all the Bernie voters to support her in 2016. The disaffected Democrats who bolted to vote for Trump mostly did not vote in the 2016 primary (or the 2012 general election, though they did back Hillary in 2008). Consider one of Trump's most shocking pickups, a previously completely safe Democratic working-class area -- Trumbull County, Ohio, which swung from 60/38 Obama to 44/51 Trump. Guess who it voted for in the primary? Sanders, right?

Nope. It voted for Hillary Clinton, 54/45. The idea that the people Trump gained off of Obama were Berniecrats isn't supported anywhere. They were already disassociated from the Democratic Party.

-Trump clearly won some Berniecrats in Western Massachusetts.

Also, Ohio is a bad example to use for many reasons, most notably because many Berniecrats went for Kasich.

[NOVA Green]

It also appears that Clinton only narrowly won two Democratic occupied US-House District in Oregon (CD-04 and CD-05)....

Needless to say if Republican House candidates were able to flip those two districts in '18, Oregon would go from a 4-1 Democratic House Representation to a 3-2 Republican.... Not saying it will happen, but red flags are definitely waving even in a +11 Clinton state....

[BuckeyeNut]

I'm not really convinced this less-than-stellar performance is the fault of Clinton's strategy. She did make an effort to decouple Trump from the GOP to attract disaffected moderate/suburban Republicans (going by some of those Romney districts that flipped, did it work?) , but how does that damage Democrats? It's not like Clinton attacked her party. At the end of the day, voters still chose between the two parties, except maybe in the minds of some independents/Republicans, Trump mattered less. It was still Democrats who failed to appeal to them. Plus, downballot Democrats made their own extensive efforts to tie their opponents to Trump.

Now, if you want to argue that just by Clinton being our nominee was damaging, I might agree. Her baggage became the party's baggage, and after 8 years of a Democratic incumbent president whose tenure triggered quite a lot of polarization and animosity, Democrats did not have a lot of room to maneuver. If there was any year where we needed to put up a well-liked and relatively scandal-free candidate, this was it. Evidently even against someone as awful as Trump.

Bernie supporters had the idea in their heads that Hillary was a republican-lite, etc. so what does she do? She goes ahead and reinforces that notion by reaching out to republicans? She was snubbing voters calling them deplorable, not even wanting their votes, as in the case of say potential crossover dems who might've wanted to vote dem downballot.

It certainly matters with independents. Independents liked Obama's populist appeal against Romney and his economic message, even Al Gore did a better job at holding the democratic downballot:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-down-ballot-republicans-trump-is-too-much-of-a-wacko-bird-to-be-an-albatross/2016/09/27/ede5579e-84e7-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html

Instead, Hillary just made the campaign a series of personal attacks on Trump and told the public that Paul Ryan was a good man who should be supported.

There are a lot more suburban Republican voters than Bernie supporters out there; in that sense, the strategy made sense. This is a hard thing to say for sure, since this wasn't included in exit polling and polls in 2016 weren't the best, but Hillary had basically gotten all the Bernie voters to support her in 2016. The disaffected Democrats who bolted to vote for Trump mostly did not vote in the 2016 primary (or the 2012 general election, though they did back Hillary in 2008). Consider one of Trump's most shocking pickups, a previously completely safe Democratic working-class area -- Trumbull County, Ohio, which swung from 60/38 Obama to 44/51 Trump. Guess who it voted for in the primary? Sanders, right?

Nope. It voted for Hillary Clinton, 54/45. The idea that the people Trump gained off of Obama were Berniecrats isn't supported anywhere. They were already disassociated from the Democratic Party.

-Trump clearly won some Berniecrats in Western Massachusetts.

Also, Ohio is a bad example to use for many reasons, most notably because many Berniecrats went for Kasich.

Greatly overstated in its significance.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Hillary threw Democrats under the bus by saying that other Republicans weren't as bad as Trump, and by funneling a lot of money back to her campaign to circumvent the $2700 donation limit.

[Blair]

Hillary threw Democrats under the bus by saying that other Republicans weren't as bad as Trump, and by funneling a lot of money back to her campaign to circumvent the $2700 donation limit.

Yet Priorities USA put tons of money back into Senate races in October and September

[uti2]

Hillary threw Democrats under the bus by saying that other Republicans weren't as bad as Trump, and by funneling a lot of money back to her campaign to circumvent the $2700 donation limit.

Yet Priorities USA put tons of money back into Senate races in October and September

Mainly late October, literally at the last minute, while previously praising Paul Ryan for 6 months beforehand.

[Virginiá]

Mainly late October, literally at the last minute, while previously praising Paul Ryan for 6 months beforehand.

Advertisements, particularly tv ads, do not have a long "shelf-life" in the minds of voters, and in the fall the media becomes increasingly saturated, so it's hard for any single ad campaign to really have a serious, long-lasting effect unless they are something like an information campaign about a new scandal the target is having.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532673X09353507
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/20/political-ads-not-as-powerful-as-you-or-politicians-think/?utm_term=.03a919555255

Honestly, politicians seriously need to scale back their reliance on TV advertising. I think there are enough studies now that suggest that it is mostly useless, and probably only effective if you air extensive ads running up to and during early voting/election day. Clinton's case is a good example of just lighting money on fire. Even if her ad campaign bought her 1-3 points in votes at some point in October, the Comey letter probably destroyed that by turning the people she convinced via ads against her again. Point is: Maybe ads get you some support, but minor or major late-breaking revelations can take it away almost instantly.

Personally I'd rather see the party invest many millions in constant year-round organizing (in rural/exurban areas as well), instead of parachuting in during elections only.

[RaphaelDLG]

Personally I'd rather see the party invest many millions in constant year-round organizing (in rural/exurban areas as well), instead of parachuting in during elections only.