subgenius wrote:if you recall, I predicted 2016 and I did not from Comey but from the obvious difference in the size of crowds between the Trump / Hillary rallies. And to this date mist post mortem agree that Comey had little influence. Hillary's campaign strategy missteps and unlikable persona dooms her well before Comey's sideshow.
The fact that your prediction happened to work out doesn't lend any credence to the methodology.
There was a pretty strong belief that Romney's crowd size meant he would win as well and that it was cause for panic for the Obama campaign. As an aside to this idea, almost all of the conspiracy theorist I've talked to or read who believe Obama "vote stole" his way to victory in 2012 start their argument by pointing to crowd size.
Crowd size is basically just a political meme at this point... but keep making guesses of that I suppose. Although the race prior to the release of
The Letter was very close we can actually see the statistical impact of if on her campaign. She was up by 6 points nationally prior to release and in a similar position in several swing states she would wind up losing. Within a week of the news story breaking there was roughly a 3% decline in her standing at the polls. It doesn't take much of a mathematician to note that if you lost a state by less than 1% and an event that took place negatively impacted your standing by 1% at a minimum and in some polls up to 6% that probably had something to do with your defeat.
This isn't to give Clinton a pass, she probably should have been in a better position to start with and you to do have a point that her EC strategy was not the best we've seen. But to deny the statistical significance of an event we can so easily measure is laughable.
by the way, part of the reason so many of those media postmortems downplay or deny the Comey letter may have something to do with how they chose to cover it. For what turned out to be a big ol' nothing burger, the media (left, right and center) hyped it to the ends and back. The media admitting that Comey's actions and "WAT BOUT DA EMAILZ!!!" was a major part of Clinton's downfall is essentially admitting that they unwittingly assisted in that, something they aren't likely to do.
For a considerably more in-depth look into the role the media played in all this, with a final breakdown of how meaningful Comey's actions were I'd highly recommend Nate Silver's
The Real Story of 2016 which culminates in
The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election.
"If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation." -Xenophon of Athens