A question
Did New Hampshire's independents outsmart themselves, believing that McCain needed them more than Obama did, and thus deciding to vote Republican in greater-than-expected numbers... producing a McCain landslide and a Clinton-Obama squeaker?
P.S. Or maybe it's Diebold's fault.
UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! Much more about Hillary's stunning victory here.
Actually, though, Hillary didn't win. She tied Obama, 9-9, in the delegate count.
UPDATE 2: In comments, Jim Hu links to his analysis of the numbers, which suggests that my "independents outsmarted themselves" hypothesis doesn't fit the data. The key point is that the polls actually got Obama's percentage total about right. They just badly lowballed Clinton's total. From Real Clear Politics, you can see that Obama was expected to finish in the 35% to 40% range, and that's exactly where he was: 37%. But Clinton was expected to get around 30%, and instead she got almost 40%! The logical conclusion seems to be not that Obama's supporters voted in the wrong primary, but that Clinton overwhelmingly won the undecideds.
I'm sure you'll see this in due time, Brendan, but Rich Lowry is wondering the same thing:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDM0MDY2YjE2YTA0ODc4MTM2NTQ1YjVmODJhZmZiZTk=
Posted by: Anonymous Hoosier | Jan 8, 2008 10:08:52 PM
Heaven forbid that the Independents were simply not swept up by the "change machine" and decided to pick McCain.
Posted by: JO | Jan 8, 2008 10:15:29 PM
Who cares? If what we are sseing is our future leader, we have little to cheer for. This characters don't have a clue what this country needs. One thing for sure, whoever wins, we deserve what we get.
Posted by: hiscross | Jan 8, 2008 10:58:33 PM
Why do we deserve what we get? Incumbistan makes the rules, the political class makes it more and more difficult to uproot it.
We deserve much better than we are getting.
Posted by: Kurt O'Keefe | Jan 8, 2008 11:02:31 PM
The hypothesis, while interesting, doesn't fit the data
Posted by: Jim Hu | Jan 9, 2008 1:50:54 AM
You got mentioned in Slate, too. Well done, Brenners!
Posted by: Wobbly H | Jan 9, 2008 7:42:15 AM
I am a nh voter who voted by absentee ballot. I can say this is exactly what I did.
Posted by: John | Jan 9, 2008 11:49:25 AM