Hillary Clinton Vs Donald Trump: Did He Win Because Russia Allegedly Hacked Her Emails?

The Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton presidential race was no doubt among the most polarizing, emotional, and intriguing of recent times. With Donald Trump starting as the underdog among the general electorate, it was hard to foresee him winning now, more than 10 months later. Having announced his bid for the presidency in June 2015, he was still viewed in January this year as one of the most unfavorable candidates in the race, shunned by both Democrat and Republican voters. The following were the results from Gallup highlighting this.

“Gallup polling conducted over the past six weeks found Trump with a -27-percentage-point net favorability rating among independent voters, and a -70-point net rating among Democrats; both marks are easily the worst in the GOP field. (Trump also has less-than-spectacular favorable ratings among his fellow Republicans.)”

This is as reported by Five Thirty Eight. The following is an overview of the candidates ‘popularity then, according to a report by the site.

“Trump is the most unpopular of all. His favorability rating is 33 percent, as compared with an unfavorable rating of 58 percent, for a net rating of -25 percentage points. By comparison Hillary Clinton, whose favorability ratings are notoriously poor, has a 42 percent favorable rating against a 50 percent unfavorable rating, for a net of -8 points. Those are bad numbers, but nowhere near as bad as Trump’s.”

Now, however, Donald Trump has won the election with his Electoral College victory standing at 306 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232, making him the undisputed president-elect. That said, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, garnering a total of 65,746,544 and Donald Trump 62,904,682. But according to a recent tweet by Donald Trump, he won by a landslide (millions) if you consider the number of illegal immigrants who voted against him.

But then there is the question of whether the Hillary Clinton emails leaked by WikiLeaks influenced the elections in any way and if they did, by how much. According to her recent public accusations against the Kremlin, Russia supposedly had a hand in leaking the emails as it had an agenda – to help Donald Trump become the President of the United States. The following was her exact statement in regards to this in October.

“We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin (Russia), and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.”

This is as reported by USA Today and had been previously confirmed by The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC). The leaked email trove which consisted of about 20,000 Democratic National Committee letters, is considered to have had some effect, but did not have much of anything that could be deemed scandalous. The emails were mainly correspondences concerning her campaign strategy.

According to several sources close to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Russian government had nothing to do with it. Another report by The Washington Post, citing an American intelligence official who spoke to the site stated that there was no established direct link between the alleged hackers and the Russian government, but were ‘one step removed’. This is as reported by The Guardian.

According to the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, the emails were not hacked but leaked as it was an inside job. The following was his exact statement in regard to this.

“I know who leaked them. I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.”

“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.”

So again, by how much did the leaked emails contribute to Hillary Clinton’s downfall? Please offer your opinion on this in the comment section.

[Featured Image by Yuya Shino/Getty Images]