The rightly esteemed Mark Blumenthal weighed in today with his assessment of the various theories for why the polls got the Clinton-Obama race in NH wrong. But while his post was helpful, it didn’t provide any real answers. Blumenthal did pour at least cool water on the popular “Wilder Effect” theory that NH voters reported support for Obama and then voted for Clinton on racial grounds. And he also expressed doubts that indie defections from Obama to McCain shifted the results, on the same grounds I talked about last night.
But there has still been no discussion that I can find outside this site and OpenLeft about the theory that absentee ballots helped HRC bank a lot of NH votes prior to Iowa, that could not be tracked by pre-election or unadjusted exit polls. If that’s right, all the thumb-sucking about disguised racism, the impact of HRC’s show of emotion, and the idea that NH voters were reacting to polls or Iowa itself, could all be significantly off-target. So in my mind at least, the mystery persists.

While we await word from Mark Blumenthal or some other wizard who can resolve the questions about why the pre-primary NH polls of Democrats were wrong (and I hope someone addresses my theory that absentee ballots cast before Iowa had something to do with that), I guess we should take a look at what happened to the GOP.
While much of the talk has been about the exceptionally unlikely resurrection of John McCain as the Republican front-runner, the demise of Mitt Romney is an equally compelling story.
The CW is that Romney’s loss in IA killed his lead in NH. But his lead was slipping well before IA. On a broader front, John Judis of TNR offers the best explanation of why the Mittster lost:

Arizona Sen. John McCain defeated former Gov. Mitt Romney to win the New Hampshire Republican primary. And there is a delicious irony in this result. If you look at their political history before the presidential race began last year, Romney is the more moderate of the candidate, particularly on social and economic issues. His main foreign policy advisor Mitchell Reiss is also a former aide to Colin Powell and probably more critical of the conduct of the Iraq war than McCain ever was.
But if you look at the exit polls, McCain got his edge over Romney by winning over moderates and people who were critical of Bush administration’s foreign and economic policies and who took a more liberal position on abortion or gay civil unions. These could have been Romney’s voters, but he opted to market himself as a right-winger. As a result, he bested McCain only among voters who considered themselves “very conservative” and were “enthusiastic” about the Bush administration. In New Hampshire, these voters were a decided minority.

In other words, Romney’s national strategy wound up backfiring on him in what should have been his best state. That National Review endorsement turned out to be pretty expensive.
The other newsworthy development was that Mike Huckabee got even less of an “Iowa bounce” than Barack Obama, finishing a weak third at 11%. In this case, the CW that Huckabee’s conservative evangelical base just didn’t matter much in NH seems to have been right. He ran even with McCain and Romney among “born again or evangelical Christians” at 28%, but they represented less than a third of the primary electorate, and he won just 6% with everyone else.
Still, he finished ahead of Rudy Giuliani, who was leading or running second in NH for months.
This is not an original observation, but it does seem that Republicans are playing a game of “hot potato,” with no one willing or able to nail down the nomination. If McCain can snuff Romney in MI and then Huckabee in SC, that could change pretty fast, but Lord knows this isn’t a good year for confident prognosis.

The Big Three election-night speeches on the Democratic side in NH were different from those in IA in that at least the losers acknowledged defeat. And they were obviously very different from each other.
Edwards’ speech was notable in that he not only promised to stay in the race until the convention (which in the end not even Dennis Kucinich did in 2004), but also pretty much dismissed the early states as unrepresentative and/or statistically insignificant. I understand why he said that (four times, by my count), but I’m sure it didn’t go over well among all those Iowans that Edwards spent the last four years courting so relentlessly. Edwards was smart, though, to avoid making any specific state his comeback target, since his native state of SC isn’t looking very good. Beyond his pledge to keep going, his speech was almost identical to the one on Caucus Night in Iowa. If Edwards loses in the end, it won’t be because he didn’t get his message out.
Obama’s speech is generally getting reviewed as the best of the night, crisply delivered, gracious to HRC (even running the risk of asking for a round of applause for her), upbeat, and a more succinct version of his stump speech than the one he offered in Iowa. He did hit a few more explicitly progressive licks as well.
HRC’s speech started out very effectively, with her “my heart is full” and “found my own voice” lines. In sharp contrast to Iowa, where she stood in the midst of a very old and very dispirited crowd of national and local politicians, she was accompanied only by her family members, in a large, young and enthusiastic audience. (BTW, the change in style from the well-oiled professional Clinton machine extended to her staff; those I saw on the tube all looked impressively scruffy). The bulk of the speech was largely forgettable (though she, like Obama, threw in some sharp populist notes), and was apparently written on notes she had to keep looking down to read, but in the end, the results were sufficiently eloquent for her purposes.
I didn’t pay much attention to the Republicans tonight, and will have more to say about them tomorrow. But I did catch much of McCain’s victory speech, which was, well, pretty bad. Looking down much of the time, McCain kept losing his place and stumbling over words, and generally suggesting an old gent who was up past his bedtime. Given the drama of his comeback, which has been the single most remarkable development in the whole presidential race until now, it was a singularly underwhelming moment.

To listen to or read much of the coverage of the New Hampshire Democratic primary tonight, you’d think the winner wasn’t Hillary Clinton, but voters determined to defy polls and pundits. Indeed, the Clinton campaign itself, which spent much of the last 48 hours lowering expectations for NH, seemed as surprised as anyone else.
But HRC did win, and we’re now into a contest whose outcome simply cannot be predicted.
So how did HRC beat Obama after losing in IA? Well, on one level, it’s obvious that Clinton did better in a two-and-a-half candidate race than in a three-candidate race. She wasn’t stuck with a capped and eroding share of the vote after all.
Moreover, the exit polls indicate that the Democratic primary vote broke down along the lines everyone expected before the Iowa results. HRC won women, people with family income under $50,000, union members, and registered Democrats, while Obama won men, upscale voters, non-union voters, and independents. Obama won big among the youngest voters, as did Clinton among the oldest (though Obama failed to do nearly as well among thirty-somethings as he did in Iowa).
It wasn’t much about ideology: all three leading candidates performed almost exactly at their statewide percentages among every liberal, moderate and conservative category.
And it wasn’t much about turnout patterns, either: levels of both Democratic and independent participation were up sharply from 2004, though Democratic turnout was up a bit higher. (Oddly, Bill Schneider of CNN suggested that McCain beat Obama by attracting higher-than-expected indie particicpation to the GOP primary. But since registered indies represented 42% of Democratic primary voters, and 34% on the GOP side, while total Dem turnout appears to have been nearly 25% higher, it’s hard to credit that theory, particularly since McCain didn’t exactly crush the field among indies).
So: were all the polls just wrong, or did something happen in the last day or two?
I’m sure I don’t know, but I’m more likely to think the polls were wrong than believe HRC’s tearing up or anger at the polls themselves moved thousands of voters. One theory we’re going to hear about is the “Wilder factor” (named after former Gov. Doug Wilder of VA): African-American candidates tend to underperform their poll numbers because people are more likely to indulge their racial prejudices in the privacy of the polling booth (a privacy that doesn’t, of course, exist in the Iowa Caucuses).
One thing I haven’t heard a thing about tonight is early/absentee voting. It’s possible that a lot of Granite Staters voted one way a couple of weeks ago and then reported their preferences to pollsters another way.
In any event, tomorrow is early enough for speculation about the impact of NH on the contest as a whole.

Initial reports from New Hampshire is that voting is very heavy, particularly among Democrats. As in Iowa, the weather is cooperating.
One of the key variables in NH is registered independents, who can participate in either contest. In Iowa, indies chose by a three-to-one margin to caucus with Democrats, though some observers argued that the extraordinary attention the Dem candidates were paying to the state, and the virtual absence of two major GOP candidates (McCain and Giuliani) skewed those numbers. NH will be a better test of indie partisan leanings, since if anything the Republican race is perceived as the closest.
If Barack Obama wins the Democratic primary, as most late polls predicted, a lot of attention will be paid to any evidence that his campaign had a tangible impact on turnout, particularly among indies and/or first-time voters.

Here’s a little pop test, folks. Read over this assessment of the country’s condition, and venture a guess at its provenance:

America is in danger. Our ability to meet and solve the problems that face us is seriously compromised. National surveys reveal that an unprecedented seven out of ten citizens believe that life for our children will not be as good as their own. We are headed in the wrong direction. We share their deep concern and frustration. Our nation is indeed at risk.
–Approval for the United States around the world has dropped to historically low levels, with only one out of four people approving of our country’s actions, even in nations that are our longtime allies.
–We have eroded America’s credibility and capacity to lead on urgent global and foreign policy issues, including terrrorism, nuclear profileration, climate change, and regional instabilities.
–Our budget and trade deficits are out of control. We are squandering our children’s future. The ominous transfer of our national wealth has made our economy vulnerable, and our economic strength and competitiveness are both declining. Middle-income Americans are struggling to keep their homes and jobs and educate their children.
–We are not as secure as we should be. Our military is stretched thin and our nation remains vulnerabvle to catrostrophic terrorism.”
–We are being held economically hostage because we have no energy policy worthy of the name.
–Our educational system is failing to prepare our children to succeed in a globalized and technological world.
–Nearly 50 miillion Americans remain without health insurance, and the cost of medical care continues to spiral.
–The failures of bridges in Minnesota, and levees in New Orleans are harsh metaphors for the reckless neglect of our infrastructure.

Sounds like, say, every Democratic presidential candidate, wouldn’t you say? I certainly haven’t heard many Republicans talk this way. So this “wrong track” preroration would logically lead to a call for a Democratic president and Congress in November, right?
Wrong. Here’s the next passage in this statement:

These critical issues are uniquely interlocked and we must have a national strategy and priotiorization of resources. We are failing to address them because rampant partisanship has paralyzed the ability of our government to act. If we allow polarizing politics to continue, we will remain a nation divided and no matter who is elected this fall, he or she will not have a mandate for governing. Too many in both our parties have sought to energize their bases instead of reaching out to address the issues that concern our nation as a whole. They appeal to extremes and marginalize those in the commonsense center.
In order to break this partisan impasse, we urge the presidential candidates to provide:
–clear descriptions of how they would establish a government of national unity
–specific strategies for reducing polarization and reaching bipartisan consensus
–plans to go beyond tokenism to appoint a truly bipartisan cabinet with critical posts held by the most qualified people available regardless of political affiliation
–proposals for bipartisan executive and legislative policy groups in critical areas such as national security.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, these quotations are from a “bipartisan unity statement” read aloud by my former boss Sam Nunn at the conclusion of a confab in Oklahoma yesterday designed to threaten both parties with an indie presidential run, probably by the leading non-candidate candidate Michael Bloomberg, unless they improbably agree to build some sort of Government of National Salvation upon winning the White House.
Some people might read the Nunn statement and think it sounds like Barack Obama. But whereas Obama pledges to reach across partisan lines, and outside them as well, to build support for a progressive agenda, he’s not talking about abandoning his party and sharing power directly with people who don’t share his (or Nunn’s) assessment of the challenges facing America, and who would oppose any progressive agenda with every political weapon available. Best I can tell, Obama’s offering an extended hand to the GOP that he’s willing to make into a fist. And his argument with some in the Democratic Party, most notably John Edwards, over how to enact progressive policies, mainly reflects differences of opinion on how to marshal public opinion to reverse most of the GOP policies of the Bush era.
I know Nunn well enough to believe he’s sincere in the desire to go back to the days when Democrats and Republicans truly cooperated on matters of urgent national importance, particularly in the defense arena. But Nunn left Congress in 1997, and had limited experience with the savage partisanship, ideological extremism, and money-lust that has come to characterize the party primarily responsible for the conditions he deplores.
The same year Nunn retired, Bob Dole gave up his Senate leadership post to run for president, and delivered a highly emotional speech touting the bipartisan traditions of the Senate (a speech that was broadly panned by conservatives, BTW). Dole was clearly living in the past, and today Sam Nunn and his Bipartisan Junta colleagues are living in the distant past. It’s revealing that the Republicans involved in this effort are, frankly, a bunch of marginal has-beens, plus one heretic (Chuck Hagel). Today’s GOP is totally uninterested in power-sharing unless it’s on their own terms, and there are no alternatives. And no one who agrees with the Bipartisan Junta’s bleak diagnosis of America’s condition should succumb to its prescription, which would, ironically, perpetuate partisan gridlock for the foreseeable future and thwart any genuine movement for change, which now depends on Democrats.

No, the title of this post doesn’t refer to candidate who may drop out after a poor showing in today’s NH primary, but to the return of exit polls–and the frantic search for leaked exit poll data–now that we are into primary season. Fortunately, Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com reminds us that reforms in the exit poll distribution system in 2006 are still in place, which makes it unlikely that you’ll be reading any purported exit poll numbers until early this evening.
That will be a big change from 2004. On NH primary day of that year, a mid-day LA Times exit poll showing Howard Dean narrowly ahead of John Kerry produced all sorts of hysteria, and led Kerry himself to rush onto the streets of Manchester to wave at passing cars in an effort to snag some more votes. Kerry won comfortably in the end, but probably aged a year that afternoon.

The Boston Globe‘s Susan Milligan reports on the growing influence of a key group in today’s election — New Hampshire’s young Democrats.
Bob Benenson has a post at CQ Politics highlighting key demographic differences between Iowa and New Hampshire, in terms of what it might mean to the candidates.
L.A. Times reporters Maeve Reston and Doyle McManus address the battle for win the hearts and minds of NH Independents.
Katharine Q. Seelye has a New York Times story on the ad war in NH, with quantitative comparisons of different campaigns and discussing the power of ‘word of mouth’ vs. TV ads.
Justin Wolfers has a Wall St. Journal piece on the “prediction markets” and NH. with a few thoughts on the Granite State’s disproportionate power as a state that provides 1 percent of the delegates to national conventions, but a huge, arguably pivotal, measure of influence.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s WaPo op-ed “A Candidacy’s Prose and Cons” provides a perceptive commentary comparing the messaging skills of Obama and Clinton.
Ariel Sabar has a Christian Science Monitor article about the remarkable transformation of NH into a gorgeous shade of blue, led by “the leftward drift of Independents,” no less.

As predicted by the much-questioned final Des Moines Register poll, Barack Obama won Iowa on the strength of unprecedented support from independent voters and first-time Caucus-goers.
But well before the Caucuses, on blog sites like Talk Left and Firedoglake, questions were being raised about an Obama candidacy based on what sometimes seemed like excessive efforts to reach beyond the Democratic base.
For many bloggers, the problem with Obama was—and is–that he’s been playing into a much-derided “triangulation” meme in appealing to voters without traditional Democratic credentials. As Ezra Klein said last Tuesday, Obama was using “old politics of centrist caution and status quo bias.” Markos Moulitsas walked back from his announced intention to vote for Obama, saying “you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that’s not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy’s hearts a flutter.” Matt Yglesias tempered his former enthusiasm for the candidate as well, writing “while there’s a lot I like about Barack Obama, if he wins Iowa it won’t have been by running hard on the things I like best about him.”
In truth, Obama hasn’t been afraid to strike back at all his critics with whichever tool best fits the job. Whether criticizing Hillary on health care or questioning John Edwards on the Iraq war, his campaign throws an effective punch. When he announced his intent to seek the presidency, there were real questions about whether Obama had the toughness to win — no longer. But to his online critics, Obama willfully ignored a crucial tenet of blogosphere doctrine — they accuse him of using right-wing talking points to criticize his opponents. And in their eyes, there is no greater sin than validating a GOP frame.
The great irony here is that, ostensibly, the thing that gives so many bloggers pause about Barack Obama is the very thing that they hate about Bill Clinton’s presidency. In fact, the strategy of using “centrist caution” to reach out to swing voters and Independents has been called Clintonism for a long time now. But many of those uncertain about Barack Obama have a lot invested in an alternate strategy of hyper-partisanship, of one-upping the conservatives, of constant confrontation, and when Obama says he does not want to pit Red America against Blue America, you can almost hear them asking, “Why not?” Obama’s real problem in the blogosphere, however, might be about something much bigger than his talking points.
The progressive blogosphere was born in the wake of the Dean campaign four years ago and MoveOn.org before that. In that time, that movement has engaged thousands of people, poured millions of dollars into politics, and given birth to a new slew of progressive stars. The leaders of the movement came into this election fully expecting to have a major impact on the result of the nominating process.
It’s hard to imagine anyone doing more to earn the allegiance of netroots leaders than John Edwards, whose campaign rhetoric has often come right out of the Crashing the Gates playbook. But for all their misgivings, the blogosphere is hardly immune to the appeal of Barack Obama. Kos, Matt Yglesias, and others have all said they would vote for the guy. After watching Obama’s Iowa victory speech, Ezra Klein was almost rapturous: “[Obama] is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.” But Obama has never courted the online leaders, he never used to their movement to fuel his candidacy, and that as much as anything, makes the vanguard of the blogosphere nervous.
Instead, Barack Obama has built his own, wholly original activist movement. Online, outside the blogs, his campaign has built an infrastructure that reaches hundreds of thousands of people, instantly. More than half a million people have given money to his campaign, and thousands more have volunteered their time. Indeed, this movement appears to be a central component of Obama’s post-partisan vision of America. In his instantly-famous Iowa victory speech, Obama referred to his supports again, and again — “You have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do…You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington…I know you didn’t do this for me. You did this – you did this because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas – that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” For Obama, the key to his political success has been to transform his candidacy into something bigger than himself, and bigger than any party faction, and he has done it without much help from the Washington establishment or the blogger insurgency.