But it was Hillary’s shock win
that left the press and the pundits flabbergasted. Every
pre-election poll had put Obama at least ten points ahead. So what
happened?
Here’s what: New Hampshire’s motto is Live Free or Die, and the people
here are considered famously and fiercely independent. The state has
some 45,000 independent voters and there were indications that many
of them had not made up their minds even a day before the election.
Pollsters ignored this constituency.
It turns out that they pulled
their weight and punished pollsters for projecting an Obama win.
Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory was only around 6000 and many
voters are said to have decided in her favour in the last-minute
after the press simply wrote her off. Then there is the Lachrymose
Theory. Pre-election polls showed Obama had a 3 per cent advantage
among women voters. But exit polls on Tuesday showed that it was
Clinton who ended up with a 13
percentage plus female vote, indication that her tears – or near
tears – may have done the trick. Some women did admit to being
swayed by Hillary’s emotional moment.
Whatever the case, Clinton
appeared vastly relieved. ‘’I come tonight with a very, very full
heart, and I want especially to thank New Hampshire,’’ she
told cheering supporters who gave oxygen to her campaign. “Over the
last week, I listened to you, and in the process I found my own
voice.”
On the other hand pollsters and
media pundits momentarily lost their voice, wondering here they went
wrong. “This has happened in election after election but we never
seem to learn,” lamented CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Even the normally
cautious Bob Woodward confessed that he had been writing a premature
Clinton political obituary titled Dynastic fatigue.
The one thing that was evident in
the final hours of the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire and her
victory speech was the subtle change in tactic. They switched from
attacking Obama’s inexperience to attacking his modest record; they
embraced his mantra of change that is resonating among the youth.
And most visibly, the campaign dispensed with old, discredited party
hacks like Madeleine Albright from the podium during the
victory speech and lined up many fresh young faces.
Winners from both parties spoke of
comebacks. “My friends, you know I’m past the age when I can claim
the noun ‘kid,’ no matter what adjective precedes it. But tonight,
we sure showed them what a comeback looks like,” McCain told his
Republican supporters.
Hillary also played on the comeback word which her husband famously earned
after being routed in Iowa and coming second in New Hampshire and
still getting to the White House in 1992. “Now together, let’s give
America the kind of comeback that New Hampshire has just given me,”
she told her supporters. But to put the whole process in
perspective, there is still a long, long way to go to the party
nomination, much less the White House. The party faithful who voted
in Iowa and New Hampshire constitute less
than one per cent of the American
electorate; the vast majority has not spoken yet. With this
turnaround however, all talk of Hillary’s exit has gone out of the
window. Instead, she is expected to buttress her staff and crank up
her fund-raising machinery from Wednesday.
The party caravans will move to South Carolina for the next big
prize later this month (some other minor stakes are scheduled in
between) with the race in both parties wide open. An estimated 50
per cent of the state’s Democratic voters are black, and there is
expected to be a serious three-way fight here between Clinton, Obama,
and John Edwards, who comes from neighbouring North Carolina.
WASHINGTON:
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