The New Hampshire primary results are in. While the Republican contest went as projected by the polls, the Democratic outcome has come as somewhat of a surprise. John McCain is the Republican winner and Hillary Clinton has finished first on the Democratic ballot. The race is now wide open for candidates of both parties – no coronation is imminent.
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Accidental Blogger 
10 responses to “The Race Is On!”
I wonder why there’s such a discrepancy between the pre-polls for the Dems and the final results, while the pre-polls for the Repubs were pretty close to the finals.
For the next primary results, I’m going to rely on my son’s prognostications- he was right when he said (before the polls) that he thought Clinton and McCain were going to win.
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Bill Clinton was also right when he predicted that the race would be closer than what most people thought.
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The New Hampshire polling vs results are confounding alright. Remember that Hillary was way ahead of everyone else in N.H. for a long time. Only during the five days after Iowa did the poll numbers start going crazy for Obama. So the numbers may have been “soft” due to impulsive vacillation. Then Hillary “cried” and went out to speak “one on one” with the voters. That may have brought back many of the supporters, especially women, back into her camp. She won by a smaller margin than what her earlier polling numbers had predicted. Which means that many original Clinton supporters still ended up voting for Obama. And no, I doubt that Bill Clinton helped – he was very unpresidential in his viciousness. Hillary helped herself. Many are suspecting the Bradley Effect working against Obama. But I doubt it.
Also, the very day Hillary tears up emotionally, two sexist neanderthals show up at a rally shouting “Iron my shirt?” Either a lucky coincidence or Masterpiece Theater. I don’t even know what to believe. Any way I am glad the race now is a healthy one. Both front runners will get equal scrutiny.
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Or perhaps there WAS a Bradley Effect against Obama. Not just the pre-polls but even exit-polls showed him winning. And why were the same pollsters right in calling the Republican race?
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I think the Bradley Effect probably played a role, but there were other factors, potentially including:
– Obama was supposed to be leading by 10 points, and he overperformed the polling in Iowa, so a relatively low percentage of Obama supporters showed up to vote (since their candidate’s victory wasn’t in peril).
– Hillary could have made last-minute strides which weren’t able to be picked up by the polling because Edwards and Obama ganged up on her at the debate and because she showed her soft, “human” side.
– The independents who might have voted for Obama instead voted for McCain.
– People didn’t want the debate to be over, and/or they didn’t want Iowa to be deciding the nomination.
– The Democratic Establishment usually has its way in the end, and Clinton is still the establishment candidate.
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I also think that Obama’s “you’re likable enough, Hillary” line at the debate could have turned likely Obama supporters off in NH — if not to change from one candidate to the next, then enough to alter turnout for each candidate. I mean, come on, enough? Regardless of how Obama meant it, it sounded fairly rotten.
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I don’t buy the Bradley Effect theory. The theory relies on the existence of people who said they supported Obama but were untruthful. Instead, it was those who privately supported Hilary who went uncounted. As Slate’s Juliet Lapidos says, “big whoop.”
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How’s this for conspiracy theories?
Ruchira, do you have any links regarding the exit polls favoring Obama? The only ones I saw were the trend reports on CNN, which were weighted and adjusted to final results, not the raw data.
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Sujatha:
I have no links. I am going by what the pundits on CNN and MSNBC have said. But I am hearing that the exit polling was quite sloppy. I’ll see if I can find anything. The question still remains why it the polling was accurate for the Republican side.
The Diebold conspiracy theory is creepy. After all, Diebold like the MSM, favors “establishment” candidates and Clintons are as “established” as one can imagine.
John Kerry is going to endorse Obama (not his running mate Edwards) today. Colin Powell and Bill Bradley have already come out for him in more informal ways. I am not surprised by Kerry’s endorsement although I don’t believe it will affect many minds. He and Edwards must remember with some bitterness the “cool” support their ticket got from the Clintons in 2004. Perhaps that is why Edwards appeared rather unmoved by Hillary’s tears in New Hampshire. A Kerry-Edwards win would have been a huge impediment to Hillary’s run this year. I wonder if Al Gore (who too has been snubbed by the Clintons) also will come out for Obama.
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I did find this link with more info on each race and tallies. There appears to be a similar discrepancy in favor of McCain and Romney at Ron Paul’s expense on the Republican side.
If you have seen youtube versions of the Hursti hack, I wonder why we repose any trust at all in the optical scan counting process.
We have a touch screen voting here in our local precinct, with zero paper trail, unlike even the optical scanners where the filled in bubbles-paper ballot is the ballot of record and can be examined for a hand recount if necessary.
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