Women Carry Hillary to Victory and Hand Pollsters Their Heads
By carrying women by a big number and having those women be about 57% of the electorate, Hillary pulled the upset. The pollsters had it as an easy win for Obama, but the Democratic women of New Hampshire put egg on their faces. The battle is on and with McCain's win on the New Hampshire side there is only one sure thing --- neither side has a front runner.
The Democrats do seem to be down to Obama vs. Clinton. She is the Comeback Gal now but he is still the most dramatic voice for change. There will be lots of analysis of whether he is too reliant on independents and she is now back in position to put it away on Feb. 5th. There will be other analysis wondering if she can sustain this or will the same concerns about her send Democrats reaching for the alternative. Which is it? Don't look at me. I don't know. I believed the New Hampshire polling.
I am hoping this will mean lots more people pay attention and lots more states have a real say. More competition makes for a better candidate. Clinton will like Edwards staying in the race and taking some anti-Clinton votes away, but I wonder how much he'll draw away. The focus will be all on them and I don't see where he gets attention again.
As for the Republicans, McCain may have killed off Romney but I hedge on that because of this year's weirdness. Rudy is happy as his "big state strategy" looks less stupid with no clear frontrunner. I still say he can't just wait for Florida. Huckabee will gladly leave the northeast and head for S. Carolina and his conservative evangelical friends. McCain heads for Michigan. This side is a big mess.
Oh and I give it 24 hours before there is political press speculation of "brokered conventions." Don't believe it. No one even knows how to do a brokered convention anymore. Someone on each side will emerge as a clear leader and stick. Super-sized Super Tuesday still looms on February 5th and there are multiple contest before that day. None will decide it, but "momentum" will be the word going into that day. What will I look for? How much anti-Clinton feeling is there among Democrats or can she sell herself as "real change?" Can Huckabee get beyond the conservative evangelicals or is he just the VP candidate as so many pundits say? Can McCain get back the Republicans in the base who have distrusted him for so many years? Will Guiliani's thin-skinned, authoritarian manner finally be seen by all? Why is Romney named for a baseball glove? Will Fred Thompson be seen actually campaigning again or will he decide he did better when he wasn't campaigning and decide to run a 19th Century style front porch campaign?
Okay, clearly I need to go to bed. Look for more snarky comments as the primaries continue.
posted by redbarb at 10:18 PM
8 Comments:
Well, that was a classic pollster debacle. We hardly ever get those anymore, and it doesn't seem to be entirely a result of last-minute decisions. They were just wrong. One thought: could it possibly be a reversal of how race used to affect polls. Maybe liberals, especially after Iowa and all the talk about what Obama's victory meant, were reluctant to tell pollsters that they were rejecting him in favor of Hillary?
No idea, just wondering...
That's me above.
Greetings!:
Please, if yu can, pardon my ignorance, but, by a "brokered convention," do you merely mean a nomination ultimately decided on the convention floor? If so, I have long wished for such, and yet it must be acknowledged that such might be perceived as not allowing the people themselves to have the final say.
J. V.
My reader must have passed over the box to be checked if one wishes to be notified of follow-up commments, so this second one is merely to allow me to correct that omission if you do not mind.
JVaughn,
I meant to welcome you back earlier. I do appreciate your reading this bit of stuff.
Yes a brokered convention means that no one has the delegates wrapped up for the nomination before the convention starts. The last one I can remember is 1960. The "people" (at least those who show up for primaries and caucuses) would have their 2 cents in but given no clear decision. It would then be a battle amongst the delegates. No one under the age of 80 in either party knows how to do this. It would be a horrific mess for the party and whatever poor candidate came away from it. The news media, the opposing party and the political junkies like me would enjoy the spectacle.
E-5,
I don't think this is a "Wilder or Bradley Effect." I think this mostly underestimating the numbers of women to vote in the Democratic primary (57% of the total) and how heavily they went to Hillary. I am seeing some data that indicates that late deciders did swing to here and I'm going to post on my non-empirical views on why that happened.
Even though I was 11 years old when those 1960's conventions took place, I still had to be in bed at a more-or-less-civilized hour back in those days, and thus I missed both the balloting and the acceptance speeches. Yet, straying a bit off topic, my love of ceremony was with me even then, and thus I managed to record some of three opening ceremonies from the Democratic Convention, and have those segments to this day (one such segment from the Republican Convention was lost due to the tape, at the beginning of the reel on which it was recorded, breaking off over time, though _MAYBE_ a brief fragment from an invocation remains).
You raise a point I had not considered, that anyone under 80 would not know how to handle a "brokered convention," and yet could they not consult the minutes of past ones to find out how to do it, at least procedurally, if necessary? Yes, you already know I would enjoy it!
As hopefully you know, you have our mutual contact in Alabama to thank in part for me visiting you, and I have come to respect you, even though we generally would not agree politically, again partly due to what she has told me.
J. V.
And I should have said _THE_ invocation instead of _AN_ invocation since there was only one session under discussion. Yet again I am unable to edit comments here since the colour/background must not be compatible with my reader, and thus I need to follow up in order to make changes/corrections.
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