Not looking good for Meg Whitman.
Click on the TPM logo to see the full sized graph which makes it easier to scan along the dates and see where key inflection points happened. What’s interesting is that the inflection point came right around September 1st, about a month before Whitman’s nanny story broke on September 29th.
It certainly possible that the nanny story buried Whitman and made it impossible for her to recover. But the trend makes it pretty clear that wasn’t the turning point.
Late Update: Our Evan McMorris-Santoro may have the answer. That September first pivot point matches up pretty nicely with when Jerry Brown finally went on the air against Whitman. Brown got a ton of grief through the summer for basically allowing Whitman to have the airwaves to herself. And by late summer it was looking like Brown might have missed his chance. But Brown’s strategy was always to hang back and let Whitman spend her millions and only go on air late. Now his strategy looks pretty good.
