Interesting Opinions about The Exit Polls from the NH Primaries

Found here:

"She’s Back… Why Hillary Won in New Hampshire and Lost in Iowa
Posted on January 9th, 2008 in Election 2008, Hillary, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton by liberalcollegekid

Well the vote is in, and once again I got it wrong… Congratulations Hillary.
However, for those that think of the 2008 Presidential election as the Ballot Bowl, the results in New Hampshire should certainly make for an interesting run up to the next Democratic primary in South Carolina. As of this writing, Hillary leads there by 8 points.



The 2008 race is forcing Democrats to make uncomfortable decisions. In the caucus state of Iowa I think two things combined to boost Obama over Hillary that didn’t exist in New Hampshire.

First, the caucus creates a different kind of vote. That is, the caucus is a public vote, where everyone present gets to see who you are voting for. Democratic voters this year have their choice of a woman, an African American, a Latino, and a few white guys. One can easily imagine how this could become the oppression Olympics in terms of what group is most deserving of a vote based on their minority’s past experiences. In essence, voters are being asked if they would rather have the first female president or the first black president, not an easy choice. It is especially a difficult decision when everyone else around you gets to see who you are voting for. We have to ask the question, how much of Obama’s vote in Iowa came from people who wanted to be for a black candidate in front of others? While this question and others like it make me extremely uncomfortable I think there may be something to this theory. South Carolina is another primary state and Nevada is another caucus state. If the results of those two follow New Hampshire and Iowa we will certainly have to give this theory some serious consideration.

Next, the caucus rules in Iowa require that people casting their vote for candidates who receive less than 15% of the vote switch to another candidate or not vote. This means that lower tier candidates, which for the Democrats in Iowa included Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Mike Gravel all had to find others to vote for (except in just a few places where Biden and Richardson received more than 15% of the vote of those present). We have to ask the question of who did the best when these candidates’ voters had to switch to candidates with more votes. Kucinich was fairly outspoken in asking his voters to go for Obama as a second choice. The rest of the candidates had to choose between Edwards, Clinton and Obama. This election season both sides are talking about the need for change. Clinton, clearly, represents not change but a return to the prosperous 90’s. So, many voters likely moved to Edwards because of his emphasis on the middle class and to Obama based on their desire for change in Washington.

These two factors had no bearing in New Hampshire, though. Women turned out in record numbers, but something else existed in New Hampshire that was missing in Iowa. The New Hampshire vote was a primary, done in private. No one to try and convince voters to change their vote, no one there to see who they were voting for. This helped Hillary, more so than anyone else could have predicted. Obama came into today projected to win New Hampshire by double digits, and left 3 points behind Clinton. The exit polling didn’t show it though, early exit polls and even those later into the evening were showing Obama in the lead. However, as the votes were counted it became clear that Hillary had won.

So why were the exit polls wrong? If my theory holds true its the same thing that happened in Iowa: people want to be seen as voting for the African American. Now its on to South Carolina for the Democrats where the African American vote is around half of the Democratic electorate. Don’t think race will be a factor in this election? Think again."