Wednesday, January 09, 2008

A THEORY ABOUT HILLARY'S WIN

From dnA:

In the Iowa Caucus, when white voters didn't have the privacy of the secret ballot, they went for Obama. In New Hampshire, they're free to express how they really feel.

dnA invokes the Bradley effect:

...in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots.

I dunno. Maybe? I've felt lately that there's been less of that -- Harold Ford's narrow loss was predicted in the polls as I recall, for instance -- but maybe it really is back.

One of dnA's commenters thinks too many independents went to the GOP side to vote for McCain (and argues that "the 'politics of addition' stuff is pure fluff ... it just never, ever works"). As for me, I know quite a few older women and there really is a passionate group-solidarity feeling about the Clinton campaign; the Clinton vote isn't made up just of people who'd be equally happy with several of the Democrats.

But I put the Bradley-effect theory out there for you. What do you think?

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UPDATE: Also see this follow-up from dnA.

Meanwhile, Jeff Fecke at Shakesville has the best post on just what could have made women say, "Enough already."

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