Going into yesterday's primary I, all the TV talking heads, and Hillary's people all expected Barack Obama to mop the floor with her. One pollster was giving Obama a 10% lead. Hillary staffers were crying in their beer with the media. Wall St Journal reported Hillary's people predicting a horrible loss, they were looking for jobs, a total wipeout.
Damn. I figured by 10:30 there would be enough election returns in to make turning on the TV worthwhile. And there she is, a solid 5000 votes ahead of Obama with only 65% of the vote counted. Then Obama clinched her victory by giving a gracious concession speech.
Wow. How did that happen? Pollsters completely blew it, predicted the wrong winner and everyone lapped it up.
One thing that threw the polls off was the speed of the thing. With only four days from the upheaval that was Iowa, the voters were still in a state of flux. Iowa changed Obama from a nice guy but too young to be a contender into a real contender. And it promoted Mike Huckabee from "Who is he?" to a second real contender. A huge bunch of voters started to think thoughts that they never thought before. Takes more than the alloted four days to settle voters down. The pollsters cannot poll as fast as voters can change their minds. The reported polls represented the voter's intentions as of Saturday or Sunday. By Tuesday a lot of voters had changed their minds. The pollsters just aren't fast enough to catch the mood shift before primary day.
Then Hillary allowed some of her emotions to leak out on TV. I watched it and before the election, said to my son," That is the most effective speech Hillary has given in the whole damn campaign." I saw Hillary's no-nonsense facade soften enough to let us voters see that she really cared about something. It must have changed some minds, the TV replayed it all day, you couldn't miss it.
So, on to super Tuesday.
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