(Hillary Clinton.Thomson Reuters) The Hillary Clinton campaign pinned blame on FBI Director James Comey for its stunning election night loss to Donald Trump.
Navin Nayak, the director of opinion research on the campaign, sent an email to senior staff
Thursday evening outlining what the campaign believed were the reasons
for its loss. The email, which was first reported by Politico, was
confirmed to Business Insider by a Clinton campaign staffer.
Nayak signaled in the email that the campaign believes two bombshells from Comey in the final days of the election
helped swing the electorate toward Trump — an initial Comey letter to
Congress that reactivated an investigation into Clinton's private email
server, and a subsequent letter last Sunday that again cleared her of
wrongdoing.
"We
believe that we lost this election in the last week. Comey's letter in
the last 11 days of the election both helped depress our turnout and
also drove away some of our critical support among college-educated
white voters — particularly in the suburbs," Nayak wrote. "We also think
Comey's 2nd letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton,
actually helped to bolster Trump's turnout."
The
campaign said Comey's first letter likely helped depress turnout among
Clinton's supporters. That served as a shift in thinking, or at least
posture, from last week, when the campaign's communications director
argued that the reactivated FBI investigation had actually helped excite Clinton's base.
But Nayak wrote that after seeing record early-vote turnout in several states, turnout lagged on Election Day in swing-state metropolitan areas like Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Raleigh-Durham.
Comey's second letter "energized Trump supporters," Nayak wrote.
"There
is no question that a week from Election Day, Sec. Clinton was poised
for a historic win," Nayak wrote. "In the end, late breaking
developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome."
Additionally,
Nayak pointed to anger at global institutions, a desire for change
after a two-term Democratic president, the challenges of reassembling
President Barack Obama's voting coalition, and the "unprecedented task"
of electing the nation's first female president as hurdles to the
campaign's success.
Nayak
also suggested some blame lay at the feet of Green Party nominee Jill
Stein, whose 130,000 votes in three key swing states were "an important
reminder of the influence of 3rd party votes."
News Source: Goal.com, RT.com, theguardian.com, Dailymail.co.uk
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