NH Results
Wow. Among the various things we learned tonight, record turnout doesn't necessarily break toward Obama. Pretty much everybody, including the Clinton campaign, was expecting the Obama wave to continue tonight--the only question was how decisive it would be. As we can see now, not very. What struck me was the way that Hillary took a lead of 39 or percent to 36 percent, and except for a point or two here or there, it never wavered. I kept waiting for the Obama surge, but nothing. Over the weekend, I wondered if we were exchanging one inevitable candidate for another, but it sure doesn't seem that way tonight.
But what happened to the polls? Obama got a considerable bounce out of Iowa, and he was shown to be ahead by considerable amounts. Matt Yglesias has one possibility: Obama's numbers held, but the undecideds broke to Hillary. That seems to have surprised her as much as anyone. Just yesterday, her husband was complaining that the media wasn't giving Hillary a fair hearing. Come on, Bill! She's a Clinton. You should be used to it by now!
Over on the other side of the aisle, McCain had his own sort of comeback. He'd been pretty much counted out in the summer, but the lack of viable choices in the Republican field had to count for something.
Although I don't lean toward Hillary, I'm glad to see this happen. We don't need to see a candidate--no matter which candidate--just skate to the nomination. We'll have time to get to know our options before we get an actual ticket.
posted by Doug @ 2:04 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
My own guess is that Senator Obama lost for the same reason Senator McCain won -- the independent voters. More specifically, I think the independent voters bought into all of the talk that Senator Obama would crush Senator Clinton and decided that their votes mattered more in the Republican primary. So they took the Republican ballots, leaving Senator Obama without a chunk of his supporters.
The other funny thing about last night's election is the expectations game. Hop in your time machine, go back to late November/early December, and tell the pundits that Senator Clinton will beta Senator Obama by 3 points. The response will be "This is a nightmare that will be for the Clinton camp -- they should crush Obama in New Hampshire!" Set your time machine to late December and make the same prediction, and the pundits will nod their heads and say "that sounds about right." A week and a half later, the pundits are calling this a great victory for Senator Clinton.
Which goes to show, I think, how little most of the pundits are worth.
Come on, Doug. Hasn't Bill Clinton had plenty of hearings?
Jason: I'm of two minds about the expectations game. You're right that the New Hampshire results look different from various vantage points in the past, but that's part of the point. We're on a shifting landscape. Sure, part of the reason it's shifting is that the pundits and prognosticators keep changing their minds, but (to some extent, anyway) they do it in reaction to events. You picked three points in the past in which these results would be good, bad, or indifferent, but that's because the circumstances at each of those points was different.
Of course, there's also the argument that the pundits push the story rather than reflect it. Part of the surprise reaction to Hillary's "big win" is a result of so many of the proletariat prematurely writing her obituary. The polls were showing her falling behind, certainly, but the implication was that she was fighting for her political life rather than losing ground in a marathon run. It's all about expectations, and in the 24-hour news cycle, those expectations have to be constantly shifting, or the ratings start to slip.
Stu: Of course Bill Clinton's had lots of hearings, but how many have actually been fair?
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