Well the average voter was in denial. Anybody that actually saw it, and they numbered in the millions, were affected by it.
Here’s my best speculation re who saw the video. First, many, many Trump supporters watched it. It was gigantic news on every conservative platform. I remember it so vividly. First we had an eyewitness account, and the sinking feeling that no one would care without video.
Then the video broke, and people really went wild. It truly did look like the end of the Hillary campaign.
I’m guessing quite a few Bernie supporters watched it too. Maybe it was a kind of salve on their fury over the scummy way their candidate had been treated.
Quite a few Hillary supporters watched it. They had to find out how best to neutralize/downplay it.
Probably not many regular voters sought out the original. They watched the edited version the MSM was purveying, shrugged off the “stumble,” and moved on.
That’s my speculation. If it weren’t close to the truth, the election *would* have ended that day.
But it didn’t.
Instead of saying the ‘election,’ would have ended, I should have said Hillary’s campaign would have been finished.