New Hampshire: BIG WINNER--Hillary; Other Winners and Losers

Here's our New Hampshire wrap-up and analysis of winners and losers.

Clearly, the biggest winner is Hillary, because she completely defied expectations. (The pollsters didn't know Hillary's secret weapon, which we at the Curmudgeon will now reveal: between Iowa and New Hampshire, Hillary got a large monetary infusion from Mrs. Curmudgeon, which clearly put her over the top.)

EVERYONE said, based on unanimous polls, that Obama was going to win. The only question was by how much--would it be double digits? The question now is why, and how could the polls be so wrong? Hillary now has some momentum and has taken some of the air out of Obama's balloon. Meanwhile, Edwards is finished, so we're down to a two candidate race.

The rest of our winners and losers:

Democrats:

Pretty simple here. Hillary wins, Obama has a significant setback, but it could be only temporary, and Edwards, while he'll probably keep at it, is really out of it. This race will probably go down to Super Duper Tuesday on February 5 and be decided then. Or maybe a week later when Virginians vote--yea!

The pollsters lose. For the record, realclearpolitics.com lists all the publicly released polls for New Hampshire in chronological order. Of the last 20 polls in the state, all taken between January 4 and January 7, only 1 (Suffolk/WHDH) had Hillary in the lead, and that one by two points. We can't give that poll credit however, because that same poll had LATER results (yesterday) showing Obama up by 5 points.

Bill Richardson is a loser. He barely registered after spending a fair amount of time and money on the state. He loves campaigning and pressing the flesh, but he really should drop out now, lest he become a caricature of himself.

The press and the political commentariat is a loser, too--to a person they didn't see this coming. Now, they get to question the polls the rest of way out.

Whether the Democratic Party is a winner is yet to be seen. On the positive side, despite a disadvantage to Republicans statewide in voter registration, Democrats had about 40,000-50,000 more voters. On the other hand, the party is now looking at a drawn out fight that could turn divisive, rather than an Obama bandwagon that might have brought newfound enthusiasm to independents and young people.

It will be interesting to see how the independents broke. Obama may have been hurt by more of them going over to the Republican race at the last minute. Just doing a quick count of the numbers, it looks like about the same number of voters selected each party's primary (slight edge to the Democrats).

Republicans

Obviously, McCain is a winner. If he had lost New Hampshire, his campaign would have been crippled. There were some signs in late polls that Romney might be coming back (although they said that in Iowa too, so we discounted it here), so McCain's people were a little concerned. McCain's margin of victory--5%--is just enough to make it a comfortable win, although they clearly were hoping for something a little bigger.

Now McCain has a shot at the nomination. But those predicting it's all his are WAY premature. This race is still wide open, with a lot yet to happen.

Another winner is Huckabee, who cinched third place with 12%, which was about the upper limit of what he could've achieved in New Hampshire. It demonstrates that Huckabee's people really do come out to vote. He'll have a shot in Michigan, will be formidable in SC, and has a good shot in Florida if his folks stay loyal and turn out like they have. Then, anything goes on Super Duper Tuesday.

Romney is a loser, but not as badly as the punditocracy thinks. He's had two strong second place finishes in a six man field. Yes, he spent heavily in Iowa and New Hampshire, but guess what--so did Thompson and Giuliani at one point, before they gave up. Romney can and will go on, although he'll need to shake up his campaign and run on a leaner organization (which might free him up to be himself instead of the Manchurian candidate).

Giuliani is a loser. Once again, he's out of the national spotlight with his silly strategy. Finishing fourth, barely ahead of Ron Paul, is not the stuff of a winner. We can guarantee you that whatever Giuliani is doing in Florida, it's overwhelmed by the headlines there about New Hampshire.

Thompson is a loser. He probably ought to suspend his campaign and endorse his friend McCain. But another option is to keep going, in a low key way and amass a handful of delegates and be an option for a deadlocked convention. We just don't think he has the heart for the campaigning--too bad he can't subcontract with Bill Richardson to do the pressing the flesh part of it.

Ron Paul is a loser--he really needed to get in the top four to be taken more seriously. New Hampshire is probably his high water mark. It will be downhill from here for Dr. Paul, especially after everyone takes a look at The New Republic's piece detailing Paul's history of racist and anti-semitic writings over the years.

The Republican Party may be a loser, or may be a winner. It clearly has a badly splintered electorate. If they decide McCain is the man they need, and rally around him, then the GOP may yet be saved. Absent that, it could be a long, hard and potentially disastrous year. Can anyone say 1964? (On the other hand, the Republicans may be happy--they'd clearly rather run against Hillary than Obama, although you should always watch what you wish for.)

The pollsters did a better job on the GOP side. Our pollster winner is: CNN/WMUR/UNH, which had McCain by 5%, had Huckabee in third by himself by three points, and had Giuliani and Paul tied, which is pretty much the way it played out. That's good for CNN, because it was our loser in Iowa. Our poll loser is Suffolk/WHDH, which had Romney winning and had Paul at only 5%.

And once again, a big winner is the commentariat, because every time the voters defy expectations, they give us that much more to write about!

Prez. Contest--More Polls With Huckabee, Obama On The Move

As we write this, some crazed jackass has taken a couple hostages in Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office. We hope this ends with one guy--who turns out to be just a crazy--in jail and no one else hurt.

In today's political news, more polls, of course. What to make of them?

Interpreting small changes from poll to poll is dangerous, since there is a lot of data "noise" in these polls. More important are trends. A consistent gain or loss by one candidate over a series of polls is probably real. Likewise, a big move between two polls taken by the same organization may mean something--at least we know the methodology is the same between those polls.

[Methodology is more important in some places than others. In Iowa, for example, methodology matters a lot, because a pollster is trying to measure preferences amongst those who will actually turn out on caucus day, which is a very small minority of voters. Just asking every recipient of a telephone call in Iowa who they prefer won't be very accurate in projecting caucus results. The various polling organizations all use somewhat different approaches to identifying those most likely to attend their caucuses.]

With those caveats, here's what we see in a round of new polls from Iowa, NH and SC (by the way, if you want the best place to get up to date polling info, go to Realclearpolitics.com):

First, Obama may now be in the lead in Iowa. Probably better to call it a tie, but his recent strength in Iowa polls has been consistent. And Edwards isn't far behind. However, Obama's strength in Iowa hasn't translated into surge elsewhere, at least not yet: in both NH and SC Hillary still has a comfortable lead that hasn't changed much.

In SC, a Clemson University poll had Obama only two points back, trailing Hillary's 19% with 17%. But three other polls by professional pollsters--two before Clemson and one after--all consistently have Hillary in the 43-47% range with Obama in the 21-33% range. We have to view the Clemson poll as an outlier, although it may show that among the hardest core voters who have really made up their minds, Obama is closer to Hillary. (There were a lot of undecided voters in the Clemson poll.)

In New Hampshire, the last seven polls are remarkably consistent. Hillary ranges from 34-38% while Obama ranges from 21-26%, a comfortable lead for Hillary that hasn't budged over the past month.

Still, what we've seen before is a delay between moves in Iowa and those elsewhere. If Obama starts to move in New Hampshire, then watch out!

On the Republican side, the story continues to be Huckabee. He's a good example of the Iowa delay factor. After a steady rise in Iowa that didn't appear to be translating to other states, Huckabee is now getting a momentum effect, helped by not only Iowa, but tons of media attention, his debate performances and his good humored deflection of attacks on him.

Bear in mind, no one had ever heard of Jimmy Carter before Iowa in 1976, and he went on to win the whole thing. We might have to start thinking about how Huckabee would play in a general election. But not yet.

Here's what the most recent polling data shows: in Iowa, an ARG poll--the most recent--has Huckabee one point behind Romney. Consistent with other recent polls, this means the two men are tied. But Huckabee has an edge--in the ARG poll, 89% of Huck's voters say their support is "definite" compared to 56% for Romney. And, in other polls, the Huckmeister's support is greater amongst previous caucus goers--considered the most reliably likely to attend again. In short, we think Huckabee will be able to get his supporters to the caucus rooms, and if so, he will best Romney by a small margin.

In New Hampshire, Huckabee is moving up fast. In the Rasmussen and ARG polls, Huckabee is at 13% and 14%, up from 10% and 7% at the beginning of the month. His support is not coming at Romney's expense, however--the Mittster has remained consistently in the mid-30's all month.

How's this for a scenario: Huckabee wins Iowa and comes in second in NH? Then he'd be for real, for sure.

Finally, in SC, a new ARG poll has Huckabee at 18%, up from just 1% in an ARG poll a month earlier. Now that's movement! His support came from Romney, Thompson and and McCain.

If the overall ARG results for SC are accurate, then Thompson clearly has to worry. SC is make or break for the Thompson campaign, yet he's running in FOURTH place, barely ahead of McCain. That said, other recent polls had the Fredster as high as second place, but Thompson really needs to move to SC for the duration if he's going to have any shot.

Huckabee also leapt into second place in a recent Florida poll, behind Giuliani, which is consistent with his trend around the country.

What we don't have is any particularly recent--or robust--data from the two states that will vote between NH and SC: Nevada (caucus) and Michigan (primary). No one's really campaigning much in those states, so why worry.

So, with five weeks to go before the real voting starts, Huckabee's the story of the moment, along with Obama. Iowa is going to be tight all the way around. And the media's going to have something better to write about than holiday traffic, gloomy Christmas retail sales and whether we'll have a white X-mas.