Hillary and New Hampshire

This time yesterday I figured that Hillary was finished. Polls showed her way behind Obama. Instead she won by a few percent. What does this mean?

This is really bad news for Obama. He got a lot of momentum after Iowa. For the last few days he seemed like the unstoppable candidate for change. Now, he's been slowed. At least a few more people in New Hampshire prefer Hillary.

How did this happen and can Hillary count on it happening again? There are a few possibilities. One is her little break-down Monday. She came close to crying in front of national TV. I'm not thrilled with a president who cries when things get tough but it was the most authentic moment in her 16 years of national attention. That may have won some voters.

The Democratic Underground has a different theory. They are sure that the evil Republicans used their diabolical Diebold voting machines to throw the election to Hillary. There are several links here. The proof? The election results were different than polls and Hillary is more likely the establishment candidate. Besides, the Republican vote turned out pretty close to the polls so something must have happened to the Democrat count. The obvious problems (why would the Republicans only change the Democratic count, etc.) don't even register. Jonah Goldberg predicted that Obama's supporters could become easily unhinged if he lost. He was immediately branded a racist (on the assumption that he was only talking about Obama's black supporters) but this vindicates him.

So, what's the real reason that Hillary did better than the polls? My theory is that she got the same boost that Republicans get from a secret ballot. When a pollster calls, many people are ashamed to give their real preference. Bill Clinton never did as well in the election as in the polls. Reagan always did better than the polls showed. In this case, Hillary may be the beneficiary of the closet voter. If so then she will continue to do better in the actual primaries than the polls indicate. This will drive the Democratic Underground nuts. It will also hurt her in the general election. A lot of people will lie to pollsters rather than admit that they will vote against a Democrat who is also the first woman candidate. The same thing will happen if Obama gets the nomination.

The way to tell how big a factor this will be is to compare polls done by live people versus ones done by machine. People are more honest with a machine which will not judge them. If there is a big difference then
discount the polls by live callers. In 2004 the polls with live callers predicted a very close election, possible putting Kerry ahead. The machine-generated polls were much closer to the actual vote.