For politicians, there’s a complicated relationship between bad news and the polls. It works like this: Some sort of scandalous or negative story breaks in the media. The candidate tries to deal with it. In a day or two, a pollster asks the public about it, and there is little or no change in the candidate’s numbers. News accounts then report the scandalous or negative story has had no effect on the candidate.

The problem is, the process takes a while. It takes time for stories to sink in with the public all across a very big country. And when the stories do finally sink in, the polls begin to show it.