Did the Access Hollywood Tape help Trump

[Da2017]

Trump's poll number's did drop. Could a case be made it might of helped him? It's possible it reminded voter of what they liked about him. When It was first released I thought the election was in the bag for Clinton.

[CookieDamage]

Trump's poll number's did drop. Could a case be made it might of helped him? It's possible it reminded voter of what they liked about him. When It was first released I thought the election was in the bag for Clinton.

It might have cost him Minnesota and New Hampshire, maybe Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada too.

[Sumner 1868]

Amusingly, according to chapter eighteen of the book Shattered the Clinton campaign was actually slightly annoyed by the controversy because they had been planning on hammering the Russia thing that day.

[here2view]

I don't think it helped him, but I also don't think it had any real impact on the election. Maybe he wins New Hampshire without it happening. Had it been released on November 1st instead of October 7th it would have played a bigger role. But since it was a month before the election, voters didn't really care. The attention span for a lot of voters really isn't that long.

I think had the Comey letter on October 28th happened toward the beginning of the month voters wouldn't have cared so much, even though on November 6th he pretty declared nothing new had been found in the emails (although we don't know just how much this hurt Clinton in the end.) If you switch Comey to October 7th and the Hollywood tape to the 28th, that'd be interesting to see what would have unfolded.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

No, I don't think it had much of an effect either way in the end. most voters had forgotten about it by November.

[Mr. Smith]

Yes, because Hillary had no way to capitalize on it without a "buh Bill" accusation from Trump and the media rolling with it for the sake of a horse-race narrative.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Yes, because Hillary had no way to capitalize on it without a "buh Bill" accusation from Trump and the media rolling with it for the sake of a horse-race narrative.

Right. He literally trotted out all Bill's accusers two days later. She had no leg to stand on. That second debate was so tense.

[Pandaguineapig]

The Washington post took a caluculated risk in waiting until the early voting had started to release the tape( they had the tape for over a year) thinking that it would hurt him enough in the early voting that he couldn't recover if he put the issue behind him on election day. It worked to an extent in Nevada and Colorado but fell flat everywhere else

[libertpaulian]

It probably impacted his popular vote share, but that's about it.

[Podgy the Bear]

The timing of the revelation of the tape ended up helping Trump.   With the upcoming 2nd debate, he defused (effectively) the issue by bringing the Clinton accusers to remind voters about Hillary's issue.  Had the tape been released after the 3rd debate (with no national forum), it would have been different.

[Lord Admirale]

Trump's poll number's did drop. Could a case be made it might of helped him? It's possible it reminded voter of what they liked about him. When It was first released I thought the election was in the bag for Clinton.

It might have cost him Minnesota and New Hampshire, maybe Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada too.

Virginia and Colorado were virtually unwinnable for Trump.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Of course not; don't be silly.  The incident brought about a GOP groundswell that caused a number of Republican pols to pull their endorsements, and risked a groundswell of GOP pols demanding Trump resign from the ticket.  

Trump's having the stones to flat out refuse to resign is what helped him.  Had Trump resigned from the ticket, the GOP would have lost the Senate and Madam President would be at 40% in the polls today.  Trump's stubbornness, his refusal to resign, caused some key voters whom (A) were undecided, and (B) not shocked by Trump's crudeness to harden their support for Trump.  These voters had, undoubtedly, heard normal, average Americans indulge in trash talk such as this.  (Yes, I remember high school and college, where folks talked all kinds of smack which they didn't mean and can't back up, thank God!) And they imagined what would happen to them if something they said, drunk, in college, was dredged up decades later against them in a race, and they viewed that as somewhat unfair.

Having played high school sports, I was laughing myself senseless when I heard Jason Chaffetz say that he never heard "locker room talk" like that.  Even given the fact that Chaffetz played for BYU, I still view his comments as pandering.  If he didn't want to vote for Trump, he should have just said so.

[Xing]

No, but it didn't hurt him either. Most Trump voters only pretended to be bothered by it, and then had an excuse to ignore it when the Comey letter was released.

[AtorBoltox]

Of course not; don't be silly.  The incident brought about a GOP groundswell that caused a number of Republican pols to pull their endorsements, and risked a groundswell of GOP pols demanding Trump resign from the ticket.  

Trump's having the stones to flat out refuse to resign is what helped him.  Had Trump resigned from the ticket, the GOP would have lost the Senate and Madam President would be at 40% in the polls today.  Trump's stubbornness, his refusal to resign, caused some key voters whom (A) were undecided, and (B) not shocked by Trump's crudeness to harden their support for Trump.  These voters had, undoubtedly, heard normal, average Americans indulge in trash talk such as this.  (Yes, I remember high school and college, where folks talked all kinds of smack which they didn't mean and can't back up, thank God!) And they imagined what would happen to them if something they said, drunk, in college, was dredged up decades later against them in a race, and they viewed that as somewhat unfair.

The difference being of course that Trump was a 60 year old man when he made those comments and not a drunk college student

[President Johnson]

Trump's poll number's did drop. Could a case be made it might of helped him? It's possible it reminded voter of what they liked about him. When It was first released I thought the election was in the bag for Clinton.

It might have cost him Minnesota and New Hampshire, maybe Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada too.

[Beet]

In Trump supporters' minds, he was saying that he believed women would consent without being asked, not that it was good to touch women without their consent.

Polls show that most voters who made up their minds in October voted for Trump. That could have been (1) the Comey Letter, (2) the Podesta emails, or (3) the debates.

The fact that the Access Hollywood tape was released only 2 days before a debate played a huge role in saving him, IMO. It gave him a chance to change the news cycle and address the topic head on. He came out and humiliated Clinton, unfortunately, as she was not prepared to answer questions about the Podesta Emails. Even though no one admitted it at the time. I was driving back from volunteering in Pennsylvania and listening to the debate on the radio and I just felt sick to my stomach. Then I got home and saw the poll showing Hillary won the debate by a big margin. I felt relief and gaslighted myself into thinking it wasn't that bad. But "Honest Abe never lied." Whoosh!

[Progressive Pessimist]

No it didn't, it definitely would have meant his defeat if the tape dropped closer to the election. Really, the short-term memory and attention span of the American voter and the media made it less consequential than it should have been.

[Mr. Bullocks]

I feel that this has become so saturated with entertainment that it has now leaked into politics.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Of course not; don't be silly.  The incident brought about a GOP groundswell that caused a number of Republican pols to pull their endorsements, and risked a groundswell of GOP pols demanding Trump resign from the ticket.  

Trump's having the stones to flat out refuse to resign is what helped him.  Had Trump resigned from the ticket, the GOP would have lost the Senate and Madam President would be at 40% in the polls today.  Trump's stubbornness, his refusal to resign, caused some key voters whom (A) were undecided, and (B) not shocked by Trump's crudeness to harden their support for Trump.  These voters had, undoubtedly, heard normal, average Americans indulge in trash talk such as this.  (Yes, I remember high school and college, where folks talked all kinds of smack which they didn't mean and can't back up, thank God!) And they imagined what would happen to them if something they said, drunk, in college, was dredged up decades later against them in a race, and they viewed that as somewhat unfair.

The difference being of course that Trump was a 60 year old man when he made those comments and not a drunk college student

I suppose there's no fool like an old fool.

Trump wasn't helped by the Access Hollywood tape; he overcame it.  Had the GOP outcry been louder and more intense, Trump may have been forced to resign from the top of the ticket. 

[Blair]

The tape cost the GOP two senate seats; IIRC after the Tape, both Kelly Ayotte and Joe Heck said they wouldn't be supporting him, and they both lost their races. Whilst there where both Clinton states, the margin in NH at least was close enough to make this a possibility.

But no, it didn't hurt him. It's always fun in politics/history to try and spin the 'conventional wisdom' but really there was nothing good about it coming out.

[Mr. Smith]

The tape cost the GOP two senate seats; IIRC after the Tape, both Kelly Ayotte and Joe Heck said they wouldn't be supporting him, and they both lost their races. Whilst there where both Clinton states, the margin in NH at least was close enough to make this a possibility.

But no, it didn't hurt him. It's always fun in politics/history to try and spin the 'conventional wisdom' but really there was nothing good about it coming out.

The Tumor didn't support him either, and he won with demographics culturally opposed to Trump though.

So what does that say exactly?