Its a good theory

I'm just so down I need  a vacation..

I figured this might be an excuse for Obama and sure some may have thought this, but I don't thnik it was enough to change THAT big a %....the women factor was a BIG factor.

Do the numbers on Independents support that theory?

Well, it's a theory...but how about some numbers?

Are there any numbers that show how many independent NH voters voted Democratic versus Republican? If the split is similar to the 60-40 split that was expected, I'm not sure how much this theory holds water, because it would not show an indy shift towards the Republican ballot.

I think that's exactly what WE as political animals/junkies would do.

But i think that theory is WAY too sophisticated for the average voter.

I think the more likely reason is that Obama won in Iowa because the polls showed it would be a tight race so the college kids got to the caucuses to push for "change".

Obama lost in New Hampshire because the polls showed he was way ahead so the college kids decided to stay home and get wasted.

You live by the slacker. You die by the slacker.

well - that would make more sense if the numbers for the candidates were closer.

HRC has 21000 more votes than McCain

Obama has 15000 more votes than McCain.

thats 36,000 votes alone.

If Obama's support was mainly from independents, you could say another 35-40K came from independents.

thats now 71-76K votes (not Dems) that did not go to McCain.

Then if SOOOOO MANY decided to vote for McCain, you could say 20% went for McCain... seing that he is at 77K, that would be somewhere between 14 and 15K (conservative estimate i'd say for his share of votes)

This seems like an easy theory to prove or disprove based on the evidence we already have.  Polls have crosstabs, after all.  We ought to be able to figure out if Hillary outpolled her expected number among registered Dems.

i was thinking the same thing.

can we also talk about how contrary people from new hampshire are?  i think there were two major factors that polls are going to pick up here:

the independents who love that their vote decides elections who decided that their vote was more valuable in the repub primary

and

the stubborn people who didn't vote for obama b/c they didn't want to be "told what to do" by iowa and the media

that's not to say that obama has no fault here.  i think his show in nh was lackluster and he didn't bring it like he got to comfortable in "frontrunner" status

they seemed to split more towards the Dems. And it surely wouldn't be enough to make up for ammount the pollsters thought Obama was ahead by.

The polls are crap. The last few days registered NH voters were getting doezens of calls daily from pollsters, canvassers, etc.

People stopped answering their phones.

The diary before this one showed all the %s.  Each row added to between 89-92 %.  That means that between 7-11 % were left out.

Another blogger noted that all proportions for Edwards, Obama, Richardson, were on the money within  1-2 %.

What happened, it seems, is that the UNDECIDED broke  for Hillary en masse.  

I think it was a combination of many things. One: evidently, many people didn't make up their mind until yesterday, and Ezra floated his hunch that this benifits tried-and-true candidates like Clinton over riskier candidates like Obama. Second: Hillary's emotional moment. I feared a significant shift to her among women especially the moment I saw that. Despite the polls, I didn't feel confident for a second after that. Third, there is probably something to the idea that Obama lost some turnout due to the projected landslide in his favor. I don't think many went to McCain, but I think some of his younger voters didn't show up. Finally, women and older votes exceeded expected turnout.

That all adds up to a surprise shift, I am thinking. Congrats to Clinton for her keeping her show going despite the premature obituaries.

But, more importantly, it's time for Obama supporters to show the same comeback spirit. Fired up . . .

I think the polls were wrong because they did not take into account what people were thinking yesterday. The emotional moment for her yesterday probably helped her.

Obama supporters would be very unlikely to go for McCain to prevent Romney from winning.

Every dem does much better vs. Romney than McCain. McCain will be much stronger a Repub candidate than Romney and I think most people know this.

You might have a point about overconfidence from Obama-leaning independents but I doubt it. I think the overconfidence if anything came from the Obama campaign - they assumed a win long before the votes were counted.

71%-5% win for HRC from "experience" voters. Obama had more votes then the GOP winner.

I still beleive that the Iowa women's vote was tilted because of the students, who were 20% of the total voters.  Don't get me wrong, Obama is responsible for bringing these persons out, but I continue to beleive that women will overwhelmingly support her.

There is no such thing as an Independent voter. They either vote one way or the other 90% of the time. John McCain doesn't equal Barack Obama. Women came back home and men didn't turn out. Period. NO excuses.

The lazyass in me is really thinking "Damn!  Now i'm going to have to work my ass off for the NY primary."

Fricking persnickety new englanders!

If that's true, that would really suck.  Because an Obama/Romney matchup is much better for us that Clinton/McCain I think.

I don't say that from anti-Clinton bias.  I just don't think Clinton matches up well against McCain.  His unfavorables are too low and the whole campaign would be about glossing over his record and beliefs.  

Romney's also slippery, but much easier to expose.  Plus I just think that campaign would be a lot of fun.

I think a number of factors contributed to Obama's loss.  Hillary went negative on Obama (e.g. his votes on abortion)and it depressed his turnout while her teary moment provided her with overwhelming sympathy from women voters.

My take on why the independent vote nearly split 50/50 was that a lot of independents saw the debates also, and decided that McCain was a better choice than Obama.

The one big problem for Democrats in this election is going to be the independent vote.  If it's Hillary vs. McCain she's going to need a huge turnout among women.  That's the only chance--but Obama vs. McCain would be worse.

And the Democrats are going to have to separate the presidential race from rest of the election.

She was not negative. Pointing out that a "head in sand" process gave us an untested John Kerry, which led to the Swift Boat attacks, that Obama has two years on the national scene, that he can't change anything if he doesn't have the trust needed to lead aren't example of "going negative." Remember that she was accused of being the "status quo" although the GOP hates her and they are the party in the White House. That he said we needed to fix things that "lingered long before Bush" is as good as he has recieved.

Interesting theory, but it would hold a bit more water if McCain had done better than expected.  He didn't.  He won by 5%, which exactly equalled his polling (pollster.com sensitive average +5.3 McCain).

So...the decisive first two contests of the season have depended not only on the particular preferences of a small, atypical group of voters, but also on their highly peculiar voting systems designed to deliver unpredictable results?

Future historians will cite this year when describing the downfall of our civilization. "Yeah, they essentially left the selection of their most powerful leader up to random chance."

I was feeling really bad for Hillary yesterday, and I like her more than most people here (and don't have much particular affection for Obama), but this is just ridiculous. I was ready to start looking forward to the general, because the primary has bloody well left me exhausted.

I also have very little remaining faith in anyone whatsoever as prognosticators. And that disturbs me, because I need hopeful, realistic analyses to sleep at night. Tonight there will instead be beer, in quantity.

You have to be kidding me? Did they talk about his sexuality? If he has a real marriage? If he has led a more quality life (Elizabeth Edwards)? Pointing out that BO has said one thing and did another, on a host of issues, is not dirty. That Edwards can't demand change and have it fall in his lap is not dirty. My God.

Either way you put it would be a powerhouse. In the end, each one needs eachother.

Remeber the Wilder affect?  In every elction Doug Wilder ran in Virginia he polled much higher than he did in the election. Likewise Harvey Gantt when he ran against Jesse Helms.  People don't want to appear rascist so they say they'll vote for a black candidate but inside the voting boothe they express their prjudice. Also you can't ignore the womens vote. 57% of the voters were women and they broke heavily for Hillary

This profile of voter only helps in states with primaries open to independents.  Those states are not the rule.  If anything it shows that one candidate NEEDS independents to win a primary...

It's an attractive theory, but the numbers don't bear it out.  The polls actually had Obama about right -- he finished with 37% and the three average models at pollster.com range from 36.7 to 39.0.  The problem with the polls is that they misread Clinton by 8-10 points, and a huge chunk of the voters who said they decided in the last day voted for her.  McCain beat his average by a few points, but those few didn't come out of Obama's pocket.

Lots of interesting comments and analysis.  I wonder if we will ever really understand the dynamics of this race.  For now, it is on to NV & SC - where Obama should have a stronger base of support.

I believe Clinton would be our weakest nominee and Obama the next worst for our chances in November.  My hope is that the GOP nominates Huckabee and guarantees a Democratic win no matter how bad we screw up this golden opportunity.

If they could win, I think both Clinton & Obama would do a good job as President, so I am not writing this as a hater.