Speaking to Kristen Soltis Anderson and Margie Omero on “The Pollsters” podcast at a post-mortem election forum at Harvard University, Fabrizio offered a reasoned look at the close contest alongside Hillary Clinton’s top pollster Joel Benenson.The article is mostly poll wonkery, but it concludes with a passage about FBI Director Comey's interference in the election:
In the final week after FBI director James Comey released a vague letter saying that the agency was examining new emails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer, the husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, Benenson said that Clinton’s defectors just didn’t come back.
“Ours were coming back after the third debate,” Benenson said of the Clinton defectors. “We had actually solidified our lead for a period of days after that debate. Comey happens on that Friday, eleven days out, and that’s when we see—our defectors leave, their defectors get loyal and that keeps moving and probably in the end tips the balance.”
Fabrizio completely agreed with him and said if one didn’t understand the polling fluctuations, “you’d think the bottom fell out.”
The groups Fabrizio was tracking, specifically “Trump targets”—a cohort which they consistently tried to sway from supporting Johnson and/or Clinton—drastically decreased in the final week after the Comey letter. They all essentially came home.
But Fabrizio said they “held their breath” because just days later Comey cleared Clinton once again. Benenson said that second announcement did not help them either “because it just put it back into the conversation again.”
In a related article at Hullabaloo, Digby comments:
This is where Giuliani delivered for Trump. He was clearly working with the FBI agents in the New York office and Comey either maliciously or stupidly went with the plan. It was timed perfectly and it worked.
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