These are Pollster's last projections for the New Hampshire Democratic primary. As you'll note, they showed Barack Obama ahead by about six points. There's just one problem with this, of course - it didn't turn out that way at all:
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won New Hampshire's Democratic primary Tuesday night, pulling out a stunning victory over Sen. Barack Obama in a contest that she had been forecast to lose.
N.H. stunner: Clinton defeats Obama
So, what happened? Pollster's been remarkably accurate in its predictions, which is why I pass its information along. This is quite a large difference, though. It's more than the claimed margin of error of any of the polls it based its predictions on.
Here are the numbers as Pollster believes they were, in table form:
| Candidate | Standard Estimate | Sensitive Estimate | Last-5 Average | Actual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obama | 36.7 | 39.0 | 38.4 | 37 |
| Clinton | 30.4 | 29.9 | 31.0 | 40 |
| Edwards | 18.4 | 18.6 | 18.2 | 17 |
The official results won't be posted until tomorrow, so for now, I'm going by results posted at MSNBC and Yahoo.
Looks like there was a bit of a disconnect, doesn't there? At least, it does on the surface. You'll notice that I've only highlighted one number, which is Clinton's actual total. The other two are within 1.5% or so of the last projections. Besides the red number there, though, there's another number I haven't shown you, which is "everyone else". More specifically, the 5.6% who were supposedly voting for Richardson, the 2.5% who supposedly were voting for Biden, and the 6.4% who were not voting for any of those people. The key to understanding why the result was not what was projected, I think, is in what those remaining 15 percent or so of the voters did.
According to Yahoo, Biden, Dodd, Gravel, and Kucinich together garnered about 5,000 votes out of approximately 269,000 votes cast. (I'm rounding off all these numbers, by the way). That's less than 2 percent (1.8%). Richardson's 12,500 votes gave him 4.7%. I calculated Clinton's, Obama's, and Edwards' percentages, too, and came up with 40%, 37%, and 17%, respectively. Thus, of those 14.5 percent who weren't voting for one of the top three, it looks like almost two thirds of them, 8% of all voters, voted for someone else.
To me, it looks like they mostly switched to vote for Hillary. Maybe the exit polls will shed some light, but I think that's a reasonable hypothesis. Biden, Dodd, and Richardson are closer to Clinton politically than they are to Edwards, and Clinton has much more government experience than Obama, as did the other candidates not named Edwards. So, I think this case is closed, at least until someone comes up with some new evidence.
UPDATE (Jan. 9): It looks like Craig Crawford agrees with me. If you watch that video, you'll note they don't mention that Edwards' poll predictions were close to his actual result, but they were.
In case you missed the comments, commenter shoephone mentioned the effect of independent voters. This could also have been a factor, of course.
5 comments:
Sounds plausible enough to me. It appears Edwards has his fans and that was that, he didn't pull any undecideds.
All in all, it was great just to see the talking heads talk out of their ass because NO ONE saw it coming.
Well, I'm certainly among the folks who were surprised. I wasn't shocked, mind you, because it's a primary with lots of candidates and that's always a recipe for things turning out oddly. Nevertheles, it's pretty clear that Clinton found extra support somewhere.
As for the talking heads, they're usually talking out of their ass. It's just that it's more noticeable this time.
Okay, I'll take the bait.
I wasn't shocked that Clinton pulled out a win, because all of New Hampshire's pre-Iowa polling showed her to be far ahead of Obama. He defintitely made up some ground since his Iowa win, but there was only a few days of campaigning (and frantic polling) between the two states. Also, the polls that showed McCain lurching ahead of the GOP pack suggested the independents went for him instead of Obama. Democrats still gave more to Clinton than Obama, as they did in Iowa. And I think the debate had as much effect on the outcome as the "teary-eyed" moment. I, personally, thought Clinton was the strongest in last Saturday's debate, even though I knew her touch of anger would turn off some people. In the end, she got her first big win and now we have a real race on our hands which, I think, is a very good thing.
But there's no doubt that NH was a nailbiter!
Busted's comment brings up an interesting point:
What is Edwards' future ability to bring undecideds and independents into his camp? I'm sensing a ceiling of support for him (something that doesn't make me too happy) but we will have to wait until South Carolina to see the effect on all three campaigns. Since Nevada's Culinary Workers Union gave their endorsement to Obama, Edwards may be lucky to crack 20% there.
-shoephone
I think what you're saying is a fuller version of what I wrote @2:26PM, shoephone, which is that it's a primary, and more importantly, an open primary, and that makes things very unpredictable. How independents voted is a big part of the equation.
People often vote as much based on their feelings about a candidate as they do for any sensible reason. On that basis, I don't think a moment of honest anger will cost him or her anything, if it seems justified.
As for Edwards, I think that this business about his "unsympathetic" reaction to Clinton's tearing up, and the hysterical reaction to it by the lefty blogs, has reduced his chances considerably. I'm still going to be at the caucuses (my first time), but at this point I'm not holding out much hope.
Yeah, we've got to be sure to attend the caucuses since the state party refuses to seat any delegates through the primary.
I think part of what may hurt Edwards going forward is if Obama keeps getting union endorsements from other states (like in Nevada.)
-shoephone
Post a Comment