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While MSNBC shoved campaign narratives down my throat last night, I heard very little about the fabled change vs. experience debate. The story line that was all the rage in Iowa and the days after had suddenly evaporated from the collective consciousness of the punditry. For some reason, nobody thought to mention what Hillary Clinton's strong early returns might mean: that New Hampshire voters might have chosen experience over change.
Granted, this storyline is as exhausted as John Edwards on a 36-hour campaign marathon, but it's still the defining tension of this election (on both sides). The stats coming out of the exit polls show more people care about change than experience for the Democrats (as we've discussed before). But the interesting bits are one level deeper:
- Of the 54 percent who chose change, 55 percent supported Obama, 28 percent Hillary, 14 percent Edwards.
- Of the 19 percent who chose experience, 71 percent supported Hillary, 16 percent Richardson, 5 percent Obama.
Note the drastic difference in support among experience-minded voters. That suggests that not only is Obama's experience message not getting through, but voters may not even think he has any experience in the first place. Still, in the above breakdown, Obama comes out on top since so many more voters care about change.
Obama's camp should be much more concerned with this datum:
- Among the 16 percent of voters who cared most that the candidate "cares about people," Clinton beats Obama two to one. Edwards polls nearly as well as Clinton, much better than Obama.
This can be interpreted in two ways—both of them bad for Obama. First, New Hampshire voters might have thought Obama was full of it: All hope and no compassion. Or, and this is worse news for Obama, his middle-class message may not be getting through. Since Edwards mini-surge in Iowa, Obama has made it a point to remind voters that he shops at Target to prove his working-class bonafides. Yet Clinton trounces him here.
Given that Obama can't break through Clinton's blockade on experience and that she already has some advocates in his "change" territory, Obama's poor returns on the "care" metric aren't good. With the change vs. experience battle looking more and more like a war of attrition, both candidates would be wise to focus on other fronts.
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Bill Clinton's now-famous "fairy tale" tirade, in which he accuses Barack Obama of being inexperienced and getting a free pass from the media, has drawn a fair amount of scorn from the Obama campaign and other Democrats, including Donna Brazile. But chances are this is just the beginning.
If the growing tension between the two camps is any indication, Bill's rant previews what could become a bloody fight for the nomination. And when that fight is over, one team is bound to leave embittered.
If Hillary wins, Obama's supporters will feel like they settled needlessly for a compromise candidate. And it won't be like Dean supporters settling for Kerry. Unlike Dean, Obama won Iowa and still has a legitimate shot at the nomination. A loss to Hillary in February would be all the more devastating given that he was an actual player. If Obama wins, Bill's remarks this week (and others likely to come) will haunt the party throughout the general. If the last Democratic president of the United States—still beloved within the party—doesn't think Obama is prepared for the job, how can Democrats rally behind him?
Add the netroots and other Democrats who don't think Obama is far left enough, and you're pretty far from the "united" "coalition" Obama has been pitching to voters.
Not that the Republican side will be any less messy. Each candidate has something for conservatives fiscal and social to fuss over: Romney's checkered Massachusetts past, Huckabee's FairTax claptrap, Giuliani's personal life, McCain's apostasy on immigration and campaign finance. That's why, as we've said before, none of them is electable.
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We dare news editors nationwide to run an image from this shameful photo-op. But all images must be captioned with Clinton's propaganda line: "Building on momentum of last night's win, Clinton NYC office bustling with enthusiasm."
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I know last night taught us (for the 12,348th time) not to trust exit polls. But there's a curious anomaly in last night's exit poll results that deserves a look. Here's how many New Hampshire voters of different ages said they supported Clinton and Obama:
18-24—Clinton: 22 %, Obama: 60 %
25-29—Clinton: 37 %, Obama: 35 %
30-39—Clinton: 36 %, Obama: 43 %
40-49—Clinton: 44 %, Obama: 33 %
50-64—Clinton: 39 %, Obama: 30 %
65 and up—Clinton: 48 %, Obama: 32 %
Obama carries the youngest demographic easily, given his emphasis on getting out the youth vote and his message of change and generational turnover. He performs well in the relatively young 30-39 bracket, as well. It's the 25-29 group that's so bizarre. What swung them toward Clinton, the "safe" candidate? Quarter-life crises? Newborn children? Identifying with Chelsea, who is 27?
It's like a mini-generation of realistic, pragmatic-minded youth in between two swaths of idealists. That or, more likely, exit polls aren't worth jack.
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The Trailhead Primary Pool has a new frontrunner after New Hampshire, which counted for twice as much as Iowa for correct
guesses. Larry Krajeski, the executive director of the non-profit Catskill Mountain Housing Development Corporation
in central New York,
has 16 of a possible 18 points, including a 1.000 batting average for the
Republicans.
Krajeski, who used to live in Massachusetts,
says he picked McCain to win New Hampshire
because he thinks the Arizona senator fits in
well in New England. “If I met him on the
street, I might think he was from New
Hampshire,” he says. “He’s that flinty, Yankee type.”
Clinton
will do well on Super-Duper Tuesday, he predicted, powering her through to the
nomination. He’s less optimistic about the other New Yorker running for
president.
“I don’t have much faith in our other native son, Rudy
Giuliani,” he said, predicting that the former New York City mayor could become merely “a
footnote in the history of bad campaigns.”
Besides Krajeski, only one other contestant, Paul Stenbjorn,
correctly guessed the top three Republicans in both states. Four
contestants—Carl Hetler, Craig Stuart, Marco Forehand and Laura Marschel—predicted
the top three Democrats for both states in the correct order.
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If there’s anything to be gleaned from the last 24 hours, it’s this: Never doubt the pundits’ inability to predict something in the future; never underestimate their ability to explain something in the past.
Now that it’s over, a zillion theories are circulating as to how Hillary bent time-space to win last night’s primary. We have one or two. Kaus has four. Mark Halperin has a thousand more.
But I’m wondering how/if this is going to change the way media report these things. In the Obama media room yesterday, everyone was drifting around in a What happened? daze. Everything we knew was wrong. All the indicators—even the reliable ones—pointed to an Obama victory. That’s why, whatever explanation the thinkers settle on, it’s still going to be colored by the upending of reality that occured last night. What says the data informing the explanation are any more accurate than those informing the prediction?
Sure, there’s compelling statistical evidence that Hillary’s debate performance and her moment of vulnerability boosted turnout among women voters. (Fifty-seven percent of Democratic voters were women; Hillary beat Obama among that demographic by 12 percent.) And in my experience, the anecdotal evidence confirms this: I’ve been told by various women over the past day that if I didn’t have a Y chromosome, I’d understand.
But if any pundit had factored women's emotional response into their pre-election predictions, they would have been laughed out of the room. The counterarguments would have been: Voters aren’t stupid enough to take her weeping seriously. Her debate performance wasn't that great. Obama’s Iowa mo’ is too strong. Clinton hasn’t had enough time to mount an effective counterattack. The counterattacks she has launched just look desperate. And last but not least, the polls are unanimous in favor of Obama.
There’s no small amount of hostility toward the media for botching New Hampshire. But let’s keep in mind that any prediction based on the explanations currently circulating would have been, in the pre-election climate, a crackpot theory. And, irony of ironies, for all the accusations that the press was conspiring against Hillary, consider this: If it’s true she surged because of her tears, then she has the media to thank.
Update 2:24 p.m.: Irony overload: Remember the woman who asked the question that made Hillary cry? She voted for Obama.
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A change in the way New Hampshire determines the order of the candidates’ names on ballots may have significantly deterred Barack Obama’s prospects in the state, according to a body of research suggesting that candidates whose names appear first have an advantage.
Until this year, New Hampshire rotated the order of the candidates from precinct to precinct. An analysis of recent primary elections in New Hampshire by Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick, an expert in polling methodology, found that candidates averaged 3 percent better than their overall performance if their names were listed first among the leading candidates. A 2003 paper by a pair of political scientists titled “First Guys Finish First” found similar effects in the 1998 New York primary elections for state offices.
The new law dictates that New Hampshire now set its ballot order by publicly drawing a random letter of the alphabet to determine where the state will begin listing names alphabetically. (For example, drawing an E would have meant that, among major candidates, John Edwards’ name would be listed first, while Chris Dodd would be last.) This year Z was drawn, effectively starting back at the beginning and listing Joseph Biden first, even though he was no longer in the race. The system applies to every ballot in the state uniformly.
This method might appear to be equally unfair for everyone, except that candidates’ surnames are not equally distributed throughout the alphabet. On the Democratic side, for example, the major candidates where heavily skewed toward the front of the alphabet. The abecedarian lineup of Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards meant that the latter three had only a 1-in-26 chance of being first—that is, only if the letter of their last name was drawn (since their last names were adjacent to each other in the alphabet). With Biden out of the race, the advantage effectively fell to Clinton.
Clinton’s gain was Obama’s loss. As the last candidate alphabetically (not counting the various fringe candidates who were on the ballot), Obama faced a large probability of being last. There are 11 letters after O in the alphabet, all of which would result in Clinton being first among viable candidates still in the race once the alphabet cycled back to the beginning. Add three for the odds of drawing an A, B, or C, and Clinton had a 14-in-26 shot at being first. (That’s 54 percent.)
One might scoff at the idea that this really matters, but Krosnick insists that the data is there to support it. When I spoke with him last night at about 11 p.m. ET, he said that, had the previous rotation of names been in effect, “my guess is this race would be too close to call.”