So, What Happened in NH?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted January 9, 2008.

The results from last night's New Hampshire primary have the political world grasping for explanations, and, in many cases stretching for them.

I've been doing some number crunching, looking at exit polls for NH this cycle and last, the returns, the Iowa entrance poll and Pollingreport's standardized rolling average of polls taken before the NH primary.

Here are the main take-aways:

• Pro-Hillary women surged


• Obama's support remained relatively stable


• John Edwards lost support among women


• Clinton's ground game turned out a large number of Democrats, especially in areas that were her strongest


• Most of Biden's supporters went to Clinton

Here are some theories that I find little support for in the data:

• There was a "Bradley Effect," in which people told pollsters they'd support a black man and then voted a different way in the privacy of the voting booth


• Hillary's emotional moment caused people to "break" for Clinton late

I'm agnostic on this one:

• Obama seemed like such a sure thing that independents decided to go for McCain on the GOP ticket

Women and Hillary's "softer side"

The exit polls showed that 57 percent of those voting on the Dem ballot were women. There was a huge turnout overall -- far higher than projected -- and among those who were not expected to come out and vote, Hillary's support was very high.

Many of those who turned out appear to have been women who already tended to support Hillary but were inspired to get to the polls in larger than expected numbers. There's little evidence of a late break for Clinton -- Obama beat her among voters who decided their votes within three days of the primary. That suggests that Clinton's display of emotion and the perception that she was being ganged up on was not the determining factor for these late-deciding voters.

Clinton's support among women doesn't appear to have come out of Obama's hide -- he won the support of 35 percent of women in Iowa and 34 percent of those in New Hampshire. It does appear that some women who may have been inclined to support Edwards went for Clinton; Edwards had the support of 23 percent of the women caucusing in Iowa, but his support in that demo dropped to 15% in NH -- a pretty significant hit.

Speculation: When Clinton had a tearful moment, Obama responded gracefully, saying that the process is a long grind and all the candidates were exhausted. Edwards, on the other hand, took the opportunity to fire a shot at Hillary, suggesting that America needed a tough Commander-in-Chief. If there was a general sense among women that Edwards and Obama were piling on at the debate and in the days leading up to the vote, it may be that because of Edwards' reaction, he bore the brunt of their anger. Caveat: Edwards overall support was within the pre-election polls' margin of error.

Obama didn't lose much ground

The pre-election polls didn't get it all wrong; they nailed everyone's support except for Hillary's. Obama's average support in the pre-primary polls was 36.7 percent, and he scored 36 percent of the vote (rounded to the nearest whole number), which is basically on the money. Obama lost ground among voters aged 25-29, and among ideological liberals compared to Iowa. There's a little bit of trickiness here, because they didn't track the same age groups in Iowa and NH. In Iowa, Obama won the 17-29 year-olds by a big 57-14 margin over Edwards. Hillary got 11. In NH, the exit poll split that demographic into two: Obama did just as well, slightly better even, among the 18-24 group, while Clinton doubled her support and Edwards slipped behind. But in the 25-29 group, Hillary won by 2 points. In Iowa, Edwards got the mom and dad voters -- aged 45-64, while in NH Clinton won every group over 40 by wide margins.

Why? How should I know? They're different states. The weather was especially nice, so maybe some of those younger people played Frisbee instead of going to the polls. Speculation: these micro-groups breaking differently than in Iowa suggest a very strong ground game by Team Clinton -- they turned out their supporters. More on that in a second.

The fact that Obama had a similar percentage of the women's vote in NH and Iowa, which also had the same gender split overall, really shows that although he might have lost some ground, there was no major shift away from him among women.

See more stories tagged with: new hampshire, election08

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

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