What happened to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination during the blackout period — the two weeks of Christmas and New Year holidays when polling stopped and there was little political news to be had and few political ads to be watched? It looks like something did. The three national polls conducted in January and publicly released show Hillary Clinton with just a 48 to 40 percent lead over Bernie Sanders — a man probably entirely unknown to almost all of the 40 percent when calendar year 2015 began. (His home state of Vermont contains just 0.19 percent of the nation’s population). In contrast, in the 12 polls conducted between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Clinton led by a 55 to 31 percent margin. That’s a huge shift: Sanders up 9 points, Clinton down 7 points, the Clinton margin reduced from 24 percent to 8 percent.
It looks like opinion changed over the holidays, and here’s my hypothesis about what happened. In political discussions between members of extended families and networks of friends, a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton on the part of many Democrats became apparent. Almost no one championed her as a harbinger of a better future; some fretted about her home brew email server; many no longer saw her as a sure winner in November 2016. People started thinking about backing the only alternative on offer, Bernie Sanders, the luckless Martin O’Malley having penetrated almost no voters’ consciousness. In informal conversations and arguments it became undeniable that Sanders trumps (pardon the expression) Clinton on authenticity, sincerity and openness. And in such surroundings claims that Clinton critics just can’t abide a powerful woman tended to fall flat.
This is all just guesswork, and it’s possible that when the next several polls come in and the results are averaged in, the trend I’ve pointed to will be less pronounced or even disappear. But the apparent shift raises the interesting question of how to gauge voter opinion during a time when polling, at least by traditional methods, is impossible.
