Pollsters blow it in New Hampshire
Hillary Clinton won the 2008 New Hampshire primary by two percentage points over Barack Obama (39 to 36, as of 10:40 PM).
However, yesterday, the day before the primary, this CNN story discussed Obama's alleged surge in the polls:
On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Sen. Barack Obama has a nine-point lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the state, according to a CNN-WMUR poll out Monday.
[...]
The CNN/WMUR polls is consistent with six other non-partisan polls taken since the Iowa caucuses. All seven polls show Obama leading Clinton by margins ranging from 1 to 13 points -- with the average Obama lead at 7 points.
Man, did they ever get that one wrong. And these famous last words sound rather funny in hindsight:
The CNN/WMUR polls "strongly suggests an Obama surge in New Hampshire," CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider said.
Schneider attributed Obama's phantom rise in the polls to a projected surge in independent voters. That surge definitely happened, according to the exit polls; with New Hampshire reporting a record turnout, 43 percent of voters in the Democratic primary identified themselves as independent. That's a huge fraction of independents for a primary, and according to the exit poll at the above link, 45 percent of those independents swung for Obama. Clinton got 30 percent of the independents, and Edwards received 17 percent.
So, the independents showed up as expected, and Obama got the plurality of them as expected, yet Clinton still won the primary.
Obviously, the polls were completely wrong. Instead of Obama leading by 13 points, he lost by three.
The point of all this, surprisingly enough, is about John Edwards. Although Edwards placed third in New Hampshire as expected, Super Tuesday remains to be counted. Neither Clinton nor Obama can be called "inevitable" any longer, which means the field is still wide open.
I think Edwards has a good shot at pulling off an upset on February 5; with nearly half of all delegates in play on that single day, neither of the two media-ordained Democratic "front-runners" can rely on pure momentum to buoy their candidacies or sway voters. After Iowa and New Hampshire, voters have to choose based on something other than popularity. That means issues will decide the remaining races, and I believe that strongly favors Edwards over the other two.