The release by WikiLeaks of the emails of leading figures within the Democratic party establishment and the Hillary Clinton campaign (pretty much the same thing) has provoked howls of outrage by Democratic supporters who see in the timing of these releases, just before the election, a sinister plot. They have darkly insinuated that the documents are fake or that WikiLeaks and its head Julian Assange are tools of Russian president Vladimir Putin who is using them to damage Clinton and thus help his good buddy Donald Trump. Some Democratic partisans have even challenged the authenticity o the emails, even though that was put to rest when Trump raised them in last Sunday’s debate and Clinton did not challenge the contents.
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Donald Trump has insulted women, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and the disabled. It should not be surprising that the level of support for him among those groups is low. One group that he has not insulted (at least as far as I am aware) are Asian-Americans so one might expect that he is scoring relatively highly among them.
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Russia has recently been the target of attacks during the presidential campaign with the Democrats especially doing some major sabre rattling. On the Republican side, Mike Pence has also been harsh but Donald Trump has not been. One of the major issues in the campaign has been the threat of cyberwarfare and outrage that other countries would dare hack into US systems.
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What an ‘unshackled’ Donald Trump might look like is becoming clear. He is going full conspiracy truther. He says that the media, the polls, the debate commission, the justice system, and the GOP are all uniting with the Democrats to defeat him and even alleges that Republican speaker Paul Ryan has made a ‘sinister deal’ with his enemies
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The disastrous last few days have resulted in a sudden realization among many in the Republican party establishment that Trump has become too toxic for them and a quarter of elected Republicans now say they cannot endorse him. The responses of those who had formally endorsed him has ranged from saying that they will not vote for him, to revocation of their prior endorsement but not saying they won’t vote for him, to some (like senate majority leader Mitch McConnell) simply saying that they condemn his remarks but not actually withdrawing support. The party chair Reince Priebus is the only one of the three main leaders still supporting Trump.
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One may think that the sensational events of the past week, such as the release of the Donald Trump recording and his ferocious performance in the last debate, would cause major swings in public opinion in support between the two candidates. But in the past, polls seem to shift by only small amounts even with major news breaking and it is not clear that those movements were due to any actual events like debates or are due to random drifts. The latest polls do seem to show more significant shifts with a large drop in support for Trump but if the past is any indication, we may see a regression to the mean and the gap with Hillary Clinton closing again.
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