Post Election Email from Navin Nayak
Director of Opinion Research at Hillary for America

first reported by Politico

From: Navin Nayak
Date: Thu. Nov. 10, 2016
Subject: Initial Analysis & TPs on Outcome
To: SeniorStaff

Hi All

We know that in the midst of the heartbreak and sadness everyone feels, we’re starting to look for some answers as to what happened. It will certainly take more time to unpack everything but we do have some early signals as to what happened and wanted to share this initial thinking with everyone. Please feel free to share it with your teams.

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. We also think Comey’s 2nd letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton, actually helped to bolster Trump’s turnout.

We knew from the start of this election cycle that our campaign faced a series of structural challenges with which we needed to contend:

  • Global forces that we’re driving deep-seated anger at institutions the world over, and an angry and alienated electorate at home that was frustrated with our political economic system.
  • The inherent desire for change after one party occupies the White House for two-terms.

  • The unprecedented task of electing the first woman to the highest office in the land.

  • And the challenges of reassembling the coalition that elected President Obama twice.

The campaign worked to devise strategies to account for all of these challenges.

  • We anticipated a slight drop in African American turnout but were poised to compensate for that with an increase in turnout and support among Latinos, the AAPI community, and college-educated white voters and even Republicans in the suburbs.
  • We disqualified Donald Trump, making him unfit to be president
          •  o Exit polls show that 63% of voters do not believe Trump has the temperament to be president.

o Exit polls also showed that he was the most unpopular nominee on Election Day of any candidate in modern history with a net favorability of -22 (38-60).

  • We also won the economic debate, addressing the anger and frustration many Americans felt about wages and good-paying jobs.

o According to exit polls, 52% of voters cited the economy as their biggest concern and they supported Sec. Clinton by a 10 point margin (52-42)

The early vote data showed Democrats executing on these strategies and poised to overcome the larger structural challenges.

  • Early vote turnout was dramatically up in most battleground states

          • o FL was up 41%
            o
            CO was up 18%
            o MI was up nearly 5%
            o OH was even up nearly 4%

  • Our data also showed that we had strong support in the early vote and we’re poised to assemble a winning coalition of women, African-Americans, Latinos, AAPI, and college-educated white voters.

o Exit polls indicate that voters who decided who they were voting more than a week before the election supported Sec. Clinton by a 49-47 margin.

  • But then everything changed in the last week.

o Voters who decided in the last week broke for Trump by a larger margin (42-47). These numbers were even more exaggerated in the key battleground states.

  • There are two major events that happened in the last week:

o Director Comey released his first letter 11 days out from the election, which likely helped to depress turnout among Hillary’s supporters. It made Sec. Clinton’s e-mail the focus of the campaign for half of the remaining 10 days.

o After seeing record early vote numbers, there was a significant drop in Election Day turnout, particularly among Hillary supporters, and this was noticeable in both larger cities such as Philadelphia, Raleigh- Durham, Milwaukee, and Detroit and the suburbs surrounding these and other cities.

  • Then two days before Election Day, Director Comey released a 2nd letter, which energized Trump supporters.
  • There is no question that a week from Election Day, Sec. Clinton was poised for a historic win. In the end less than 110K votes out of tens of millions cast on Election Day made the difference in this race. It is worth noting that Jill Stein alone got 130K votes in those three states---and though her votes don't distribute perfectly to cover the margin across the three states, it is an important reminder of the influence of 3rd party votes.
  • In the end, late breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome.