I love a good transitional sentence!
Since July we have asked more than 30,000 Americans to say exactly what it was they read, saw or heard about the two major party candidates over the past several days. The type of information getting through to Americans varies significantly depending on whether the candidate in question is Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton. Americans’ daily reports about Mr. Trump are directly tied to what he is doing and saying. If Mr. Trump talks about Muslim parents and their son who was killed in action, that’s what the public remembers. If he goes to Mexico or Louisiana, that’s what they recall reading or hearing about him. If Mr. Trump calls President Obama the founder of the Islamic State, “ISIS” moves to the top of the list of what Americans tell us they are hearing about the Republican candidate.
What Americans recall hearing about Mrs. Clinton is significantly less varied. Specifically — and to an extraordinary degree — Americans have consistently told us that they are reading and hearing about her handling of emails while she was secretary of state during President Obama’s first term. In eight of the past 10 weeks, “emails” has been the most frequently recalled word in Americans’ reports of news about Mrs. Clinton — the exceptions being the week of the Democratic convention, when emails fell to second place, and this past week when “pneumonia” and “health” eclipsed emails.
When Matt Lauer of NBC News questioned Clinton about her emails for a third of the allotted time during the commander-in-chief forum on MSNBC earlier this month, he was criticized for focusing on an irrelevant issue. But the research shows that the relevance of Mrs. Clinton’s emails is very real in the minds of average Americans.
I am not quite sure how they got from “they are reading and hearing about her handling of emails...” to “But the research shows that the relevance of Mrs. Clinton’s emails is very real in the minds of average Americans.” I thought they were just reading and hearing about the email brouhaha, I do not recall the research stating: “...the relevance…is very real...”. According to the interwebs, “Relevance is simply the noun form of the adjective ‘relevant,’ which means ‘important to the matter at hand.’” How the Times makes its transition from “reading and hearing” to “relevance...in the minds of average Americans” I am not sure. They did not ask, “How important to you are the things that you read and hear about the candidates in the task at hand (electing a president)”. Ah yes, journalism.