The Comeback Kid, Part II

Have I ever blogged two consecutive posts that were more spectacularly wrong than yesterday's "Ohio State will win tonight" and "When will Hillary drop out?" -- the latter of which opined, "I don't think there is any way she can beat Obama. In fact, I believe that she will not win a single primary. Obama's momentum is already unstoppable, at least by her."

Heh. Oh, waiter! One order of crow, please!

So... what the hell happened? How did Obama go from a double-digit lead to a stunning defeat in just 24 hours? Was it Hillary's tears that turned the tide? Was it the fire in her belly at the debate?

Did the race-based Bradley effect, absent in Iowa, rear its ugly head tonight? Did women voters decide they didn't want the first serious female candidate for president to go down in flames in the second primary?

Did New Hampshire's much-ballyhooed independent voters outsmart themselves -- as I pondered earlier in an Instalanched post, and as Rich Lowry subsequently pondered as well -- by voting strategically for McCain because they thought he needed their support more than that unstoppable Obama freight train did?

Or did those maverick, independent-minded Granite Staters simply overdose on the MSM's Obama-mania, and decide that they were going to do something unexpected, dammit, because this is New Hampshire, and that's what they do?

I think that last theory might be the best one. But Mark Halperin offers some more possibilities.

Anyway, Obama has conceded, and now Hillary is speaking. I thought Obama's concession speech was pretty weak compared to his victory speech five nights ago, though I did like the line about people "who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable." I'm still watching the early part of Hillary's speech as I write this (I'm a few minutes behind on the TiVo, thanks to some crying-baby drama).

I was rooting for Obama, but what the hell. From the perspective of politics-as-sport, this is great. It means both parties are going to have competitive nomination battles. Awesome. (Or, as one NRO poster put it, "We will have Hillary Clinton to kick around anymore, and I'm glad.")

P.S. Hillary wants to "end the war in Iraq the right way." I like that.

P.P.S. She praises Dodd, Biden, Richardson, Kucinih, Edwards and Obama. What about Gravel??

P.P.P.S. Speaking of crying babies, I thought this was pretty amusing: "Can I get my 5-month-old daughter photographed with every presidential candidate?" Heh.

UPDATE: "They said this day would never come!" What day, you ask? Why, of course, the day when a National Review columnist would hold up Hillary Clinton as an "insurgent against the liberal MSM," proof that "voters can stand up against an emotional 24/7 media Valentine for one candidate." Hillary Clinton, conservative hero. Heh! (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

UPDATE 2: Another theory on why Hillary did unexpectedly well: ballot order! "Prof. Jon Krosnick of Stanford University [argues that] the order of names on the New Hampshire ballot - in which, by random draw, Clinton was toward the top, Obama at the bottom - netted her about 3 percentage points more than she'd have gotten otherwise. That's not enough to explain the gap in some of the polls, which presumably randomized candidate names, but it might hold part of the answer."

Comments

[Condor]

"Have I ever blogged two consecutive posts that were more spectacularly wrong than yesterday's "Ohio State will win tonight" and "When will Hillary drop out?""

I was going to mention this, but I thought better of it.

[Brendan Loy]

I appreciate your restraint, but I deserve the mockery in this instance. :)

[M. Simon]

So what is Hill's plan?

Beat the stuffing out of the bad guys until they give up?

I'd like that.

[David K.]

Or maybe the pollsters are just plain wrong because they are gathering bad data...

[Brendan Loy]

Then why were they accurate in the GOP race? And in Iowa? And in tons of other elections? What is your theory, David, about why these particular pollsters were "just plain wrong," why this particular data was "bad"? And for that matter, which pollsters and which data are you referring to? There were something like a dozen New Hampshire polls in the last few days -- by different pollsters, collecting different data, using different methods -- and they were all wrong in precisely the same direction. Don't treat them like a monolith, because they're not.

People love to rail against polls, but the fact is, they're usually pretty accurate. (Talking about pre-election polls here, not exit polls, which are a whole different animal.) It is, as ABC's Gary Langer writes, "simply unprecedented for so many polls to have been so wrong." It's important to determine just what happened, but the Beavis-and-Butthead "heh heh, polls suck" response won't get us anywhere.

Interesting theory from I-forget-where:

Independents who thought Obama had a Democratic win sewn up went and voted for McCain.

This also explains McCain's margin of victory.

[Brendan Loy]

That theory is from right here on this very blog. :) However, as noted in a comment on that post, it doesn't seem to fit the data.

[JD]

That theory is from right here on this very blog.

I think that's a sign that I have been attempting to read too many blogs simultaneously. Or I need sleep. Probably both.

[David K.]

Good lord Brendan, i realize you are probably tired lately but there is no need to get all pissy about it. I just wanted to mention something that you missed in your roll of possible reasons why the results in the polls were wrong. Given that it has happened numerous times in recent years you'd think it wouldn't be as far fetched and ridiculous a comment to make as you seem to imply I was making. I wasn't creating a monolith, i wasn't railing against the polls, hell I'm not even sure how you can extrapolate that from my one sentence comment. And you wonder why I get upset when you single me out for criticism...

[Wobbly H]

Methinks you're being a bit oversensitive, Davie. This is how Brenners replies to posts with which he strongly disagrees, and what you threw out was a teense intellectually lazy. Don't take it personally.

[Brendan Loy]

David, I wasn't saying that your comment was "far fetched and ridiculous." I was merely challenging you (particularly in my "pissy" first paragraph) to defend your logic, which I perceived as having some serious holes in it.

To the extent my comment was worded more harshly than it might have been, it's probably because you struck a nerve, as people just throwing up their hands and saying "polls suck" is a pet peeve of mine. But my comment was not intended as a personal attack, nor, I think, does it objectively come across that way, particularly in the context of what passes for normal discussion around here. Reading it over, I guess I can understand how the Beavis-and-Butthead comment might have rankled, but I still think you're overreacting.

If indeed it was the Beavis thing that upset you, let me just say that I certainly didn't mean to imply that you personally are Beavis or Butthead, just that I believe your gut reaction -- which is quite common -- is an oversimplification, and that that common oversimplification is, IMHO, generally a symptom of lazy reasoning, which can be conveniently summed up by a quote from America's favorite vulgar cartoon teenagers. That's not at all the same thing as saying you're stupid, which you may have thought I was saying.

Anyway, I apologize for offending you. That cetainly wasn't my intention. I was just trying to have a substantive discussion about this point.

[Joe Mama]

Polls suck!

(throwing up hands)

[Brendan Loy]

Heh.

[Sandy Underpants]

With that being said, can we include Ron Paul in the next Fox Forum? He's whipped Rudy and Fred in each of the first 2 primaries respectively. If Thompson doesn't drop out and gets invited to the next debate after a whopping 1%, Dr. Paul certainly deserves to be there as well. Against all polls.

[David K.]

to defend your logic, which I perceived as having some serious holes in it.

What logic? What argument? I merely pointed out another possibility, i never claimed I had proof or a reason to believe it was absolutely that. You merely pointed out potential reasons above, some of which had no supporting evidence. But if you want an argument to back it up, how about the fact that in recent years polls in this type of venue have proven unreliable. Or the fact that phone polling misses out on cell phone only users and is thus missing a significant demographic and is therefore potentially unreliable.

I'm not so much offended by the specific things you cited but your overall reaction, to what seemed to me a rather innocent addition to the list of possibilities. Substantive discussions are great and all but starting them off with what comes across as "How can you possibly think that?!? Are you a f*ing moron or something?!?!", which granted wasn't your intent, is a little offputting.

[Brendan Loy]

The key point is the last one ("which granted wasn't your intent"). "How can you possibly think that?!? Are you a f*ing moron or something?!?!" was most definitely not my intent at all. Trust me, I know what it's like to have that intent, because I do feel that way in comment-wars sometimes. :) But in this case, I definitely didn't. So again I apologize if I sounded unduly harsh -- that wasn't my intent at all.

[Alasdair]

I, too, must step up to defend Our David !

When David, in referring to his *own* writings, types "What logic? What argument?", We Cannot Help but Agree with him !

[anonamom]

Some of the reasons tha have been offered as to the inaccuracy of the polls in NH regarding thr Dems:

1. People without high school degrees are less likely to participate in polls, but were big Hillary supporters.

2. Significant numbers of 35-59 year old women decided to support Hillary after initially being Obama supporters after witnessing the glee male colleagues greeted the news of her political demise after the "emotional" interview.

3. Independents who were going to vote for Obama decided to vote for McCain instead, when the early polls were calling for Obama to have a double-digit lead.
(These would be the folks looking for a straight talking candidate, obviously not folks who have a strong position on Iraq!)

[Brian Foster]

For my money, anonamom's #2 is the most likely explanation. #1 may also be a factor, but not nearly as big as #2. The last 24 hours of the NH campaign were not captured by any poll, and in that time Hillary did exactly what she needed to do -- show that she was human.