Hillary: WTF?
With the polls and media and everybody got it so horribly wrong on the New Hampshire primary, there are some great theories going around as to what the hell just happened. There’s a particularly good piece on Slate.com which mentions the Bradley effect (white people will tell pollsters that they’ll vote for a black candidate, but won’t do it in the privacy of a booth), the Reverse Bradley (in which Iowa’s caucus meant people could be seen voting one way or another) and the fact that a lot voters only pay attention very late in the race, so that what they told the pollsters earlier doesn’t really count.
The whole things opens up the question of polls: how often they go wrong (the same happened in the 2004 presidential election; the Irish general election polls were largely unreliable) and what value they bring early in a campaign if people change or make up their minds when they engage with the issues in the last 24 hours.
Finally, for an idea of how Clinton’s staff were spooked yesterday, and the commentators bullish, watch Sydney Blumenthal (Clinton strategist) in full damage limitation mode while Frank Luntz laughs it up on last night’s Prime Time.
Shane there was a good piece by Gary Younge in Monday’s Guardian (followed by a typically furious debate on CiF) on a related topic. An alternative theory I’ve heard is that floating independents (who want moderate candidates on both sides come November) opted for McCain, on the Republican side based on the assumption that Obama of Clinton was comfortably ahead, to finish off Romney. Either way, the fact that upcoming primaries are closed off to non-party delegates could signal big problems for Obama. I really hope not though given that Edwards is now effectively gone.
Comment by Sean | January 9, 2008 at 4:59 pmSean - It’s really kicked the story into a whole other gear. There had been a sense from the news side that the narrative was about Obama’s emergence as a “new JFK”. That got swamped pretty quickly.
Comment by Shane | January 9, 2008 at 8:20 pmA lot of people seem to have been referring to Obama as the new Bobby Kennedy and it certainly seems that media fell in love with him and perhaps over estimated his strengths.
The good news is that we now have a strong two way battle to watch.
If things don’t get too nasty I can see a Clinton Obama ticket for the Democrats come November
Comment by Mark | January 10, 2008 at 11:16 amThey’re all c**ts, in my book (which is being published in April).
Comment by Damien | January 11, 2008 at 1:18 am