I'm starting to think Hillary peaked way too soon. She has blown over $100 million in ad spending in the way over-priced Olympic ad market (Trump has spent zero), and her liberal media enablers have dropped everything in their arsenal. And what has all that gotten her? A two week bump in the polls...13 weeks before the election...and now the race is almost back to dead even. I think the Clinton plan was to put Trump away early, they hoped they would shake his confidence and get him in a death spiral of negative polls and self defeat. It looked like it might work, but Trump just shrugged, made a few campaign changes and moved on. Now it is him that is sitting on a bundle of money and getting ready to go on the attack...
And after his speech last night...WOW...I’d like to see that one reflected in the polls.
I think you are right, that the bump in her polls is attributable to ad buys in combination with relentless media attack on Trump (unearned media).
It's popular to blame Trump for the choice of stories the press has taken (2nd amendment remark, Khan, etc.), but the press has been transparently obtuse in picking these stories. Every "man on the street" they interview laughs at them.
If you view the world through the press eyes, Trump has barely run an offensive other than Hillary's e-mail, and the press is trying to turn that into old, settled news of a harmless infraction.