| Pollster.com's Charles Franklin mulls over why polls got Clinton 's numbers so egregiously wrong in New Hampshire : "...the failure of polling in New Hampshire was [likely] tied to swiftly changing politics rather than to failures of methodology."
Kossak DHinMI has a must-read, town-by-town analysis of the New Hampshire results, and posits that the media and pollster failures have to do with the demographics of the voters that supported Hillary Clinton -- blue-collar middle-aged and older women living in rural areas -- and her team's ability to mobilize them: "...this win by Clinton doesn't appear to have been brought about by anything else that changed in the last two days. No, it appears at this early stage of analysis that the pieces were in place for this win all along, and that the 'secret weapon' of the Clinton campaign was their field program to significantly boost turnout with their strongest demographic, single women and women with less than a college degree."
Kos himself sums up a possible rationale for Clinton protest votes: "The more she's attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she'll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they've gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe's mug to bring me back down to earth, but most people don't know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can -- by voting for her."
The Notorious Mark T is suspicious that Clinton 's win is a result of jerry-rigged voting machines: "Then there's this small problem - New Hampshire uses Diebold optical scanning machines to count the paper ballots. This is the same machine that was so easily hacked in HBO's movie, Hacking Democracy. The machines are under control of a private company, LHS Associates, which has exclusive control of the memory cards, start to finish. There is no interference in its control, no government oversight. And New Hampshire has done nothing, nothing, since the weaknesses of the Deibold machines were exposed, to remedy the problem. Nothing." (As Mark T noted, you can find more information at The Brad Blog.)
Drunkard's Lamppost examines the difference between the New Hampshire hand count and the Diebold and finds correlation, not causation: "There are so many variables in an election result that to put Hillary's win down to jiggery-pokery without any real evidence is over the top. Demographics of the turnout and McCain siphoning Independents away from Obama at the last minute are infinitely more likely to have affected the than Diebold skullduggery."
Chris Matthews apparently did not learn his lesson: ""The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York . We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..." It's a wonder this guy still has a job. He's an embarrassment to his network.
Obama co-chair Jesse Jackson, Jr. questions Clinton's tears: "We saw something very clever in the last week of this campaign...we saw a sensitivity factor....Not in response to voters -- not in response to Katrina, not in response to other issues that have devastated the American people, the war in Iraq, we saw tears in response to her appearance. So her appearance brought her to tears, but not hurricane Katrina." Er...Obama's not going to make many friends with this approach, IMHO.
Post New Hampshire primaries: Barack Obama wins the endorsement of one of Nevada 's most powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union. |
