Posted by: mcq on Wednesday, January 09, 2008 I don't know about you, but about 9 or 9:30 last night I could sense that the numbers for Hillary Clinton weren't going to change. That, in fact, she was probably going to win New Hampshire. Of course by that time, the Republican race was over, speeches given and candidates zipping out of the state. But Clinton? Wow. Because she had been written off by just about everyone out there, to include me. I'd been sucked into the polling frenzy which showed Obama not only winning, but in most cases winning by double digits. Instead Hillary Clinton gave the Obama bandwagon a flat tire. So what happened? Well some possible explanations are:
I think it was a combination of all of the above and some other stuff. I could probably go on for a number of paragraphs, but as hard as it is for me to say this, she was the "comeback kid" (relatively speaking) last night. And that makes this one hell of a horserace. But a point Dale made last night should be kept in mind as well - this win came as just as much of a surprise to the Clinton campaign as it did to everyone else. On the Republican side, no real surprises. NH just has a thing for John McCain. Instead the story about NH is Hillary Clinton and the polls. What in the world happened to the polls. On the Republican side, they were pretty much dead on - I'm talking about the pre-primary polls. But on the Democratic side, they weren't just off a little, they were wildly off. And the exit polling, for Democrats, wasn't much better (although the exit polling for Reps, again, was almost dead on). Here is the exit poll data from Fox News as they presented it at 8pm last night: Reps - 35% McCain, 30% Romney, 13% Huckabee. Dems - Obama 39%, Clinton 34%, Edwards 18%.Very close on Edwards, but nowhere near the final result for Clinton/Obama. I remember Michael Barone saying that for whatever reason exit polling in NH was very "dubious". Yet if you look at it, only Clinton and Obama were wrong. And the results the exit pollers got were very believable because the polls, who were so wrong, supported what they were getting. My guess is this had a lot to do with the way the NH primary is conducted, with its large independent vote and a history of deciding late. But if the polls were to be believed prior to the vote, then there was a whole lot of switching going on. But then there was a whole lot of hard work going on by the campaigns as well. Needless to say, there are a whole bunch of pollsters sitting around scratching their heads. And there's a campaign staff doing the same thing as they try to figure out how what they thought was a sure victory turned into a second place finish. What effect will this have in South Carolina? Well I hate to say "let's watch the polls", but that's about all we have at the moment. I think HRC gets a bit of a bounce out of this - how about you? |
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