Are Terrorist Attacks Bad for Hillary Clinton's Campaign?

This election cycle has coincided with several high-profile acts of terrorism in the United States, helping to turn it into one of the two biggest issues for voters during this campaign. So after a weekend that included two acts of attempted mass murder—one was obviously terrorism, and ISIS has claimed responsibility for the other—it's safe to assume that the political fallout will be considerable.

Now that this weekend's perpetrators appear to be dead or in custody and since all the victims are expected to survive their injuries, we now face the inevitable question of how this is going to affect the election. And with Hillary Clinton recovering from a crushing case of pneumonia, and a comorbid case of plunging-poll-number-itis, it's reasonable to wonder if this turn of events will turn her into the underdog going into the first presidential debate next week.

Her brief speech on the attacks, delivered Monday in a New York airplane hangar on the way to another campaign event, was a rebuke of Donald Trump's blunt approach to the issue—"knock the hell out of" ISIS, as he said in an appearance on Fox News Monday morning—and an appeal to strategic thinking over saber-rattling. Clinton declared that her administration wouldn't "go after an entire religion and give ISIS exactly what it's wanting in order for them to enhance their positions." And she tossed out technocratic, non-military solutions like working "more closely with Silicon Valley," to prevent Americans from being recruited by extremist cells.

According to Larry Sabato, who directs the University of Virginia Center for Politics and runs the political blog Sabato's Crystal Ball, Clinton's rhetoric might be a little on the tame side, as far as voter preferences are concerned. "She could use a bit more toughness," Sabato told VICE. He suggested an alternative, more Trumpian, talking point: "'We'll pursue them to the ends of the Earth and destroy them.'"

Past polls, like an ABC News/Washington Post survey taken in June, have given Clinton a sizable advantage over Trump on the issue of terrorism. But there are indications that this may be changing. Trump has experienced an overall surge in the polls over the last few weeks. Those surveys were taken before the weekend's attacks, so it's not clear that the numbers are tied to terrorism in any way; but according to a Quinnipaic University poll released last week, 57 percent of Trump backers believed a deadly terror attack was imminent, while only 19 percent of Clinton supporters felt the same way.

"In other words," as Philip Bump wrote in the Washington Post Monday, "the gain to Trump from his position on terrorism may have been exactly where he already saw it: among Republicans."

In July, when I asked University of Virginia historian Brian Balogh for scenarios that could blow the election for Clinton, one possibility he offered was "an organized terrorist attack on the American homeland in the last six weeks of the campaign." There are seven more weeks left in the race at this point, but the remark points to a perception that fear could drive the electorate into the arms of Trump.

Jennifer Merolla, professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside, has researched the reactions of voters at times like these. "We have found that when terrorism is in the news, male, Republican, incumbent leaders are perceived more favorably, both with respect to leadership qualities, as well as approval ratings," she told VICE. Although she hastened to add that her research hadn't shown such a strong boost for non-incumbent Republicans.

There are indications that terror has boosted Trump's support in the past. "Trump saw big bumps in polling after attacks like those in Paris and San Bernardino," Ballotpedia's federal desk editor, Sarah Rosier, told VICE. A poll by CBS and the New York Times taken a week after the San Bernardino attack last December showed Trump's numbers skyrocketing among Republicans—although to be fair, some of that may be attributed to the eventual GOP nominee's momentum going into the primaries.

But whether terrorism will drive voters to Trump in the general election is a murkier question. After the shooting at a gay night club in Orlando this June, Clinton's numbers against Trump appeared to suffer—one Reuters poll showed her losing 3.6 points in a head-to-head matchup. But as Rosier pointed out, "Trump only saw a 0.8 percent average bump against Clinton, according to RealClearPolitics averages."

Besides, polls also showed that the majority of Americans disliked Trump's reaction to the Orlando shooting—in which he reiterated his proposal to ban Muslims from immigrating to the US. So there is probably good reason to think that statements Trump made after this weekend's attacks, like claiming that ISIS is "winning the war," could draw a similarly sour reaction from voters.

"Each candidate has qualities that advantage and disadvantage them on the issue," according to Merolla. "While Hillary Clinton may be disadvantaged by her partisanship and gender, she is advantaged by her foreign policy experience," she explained.

So the pattern suggests that polling outcomes have amounted to roughly a tie in past cases between Trump and Clinton when voters are focused on terrorism. However, Rosier added, "that could change now that we are only weeks away from the election and now that there have been more attacks on American soil."

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