Like everyone else in New Hampshire--reporters, campaign workers for Hillary Clinton and for Barack Obama, and ski lift operators--I thought Obama was schussing toward victory (perhaps even a double-digit--victory) in the Live Free or Die state. Howard Kurtz slaps the media silly today for calling the race so wrong. (Sometimes, Kurtz really has it easy.) But to explain--not excuse--let me note that on Election Day, all the Clinton folks in New Hampshire had the look of death on their faces. They were telling reporters that the campaign was not working. They were saying that it would have to be retooled. We were all fooled by the data that was available: the polls, the obvious passion and attendance gap between Obama's events and Clinton's. The media's big error was not misreading this information, though that was a mistake; it was overhyping the collective conventional wisdom. But that's what the media tend to do in order to win attention. Will a cable talk show host who plays it calm and cool ("we don't really know what's going to happen; the front-runner could win again; then again, another candidate might triumph") bag a bigger audience than one who bangs a drum loudly, playing up the drama and sharing sharp opinions? The same goes for bloggers and the tabloids.
In any event, I wonder how much--if at all--the media coverage of the race affected the results. Did Iowa voters decide who to vote for on the basis of what was said on Fox News or MSNBC? Did those legendary independent-minded voters of New Hampshire take their cues from the political coverage of The New York Times, Washington Post, or the New York Post? In both states, voters can obtain their information and impressions directly from the candidates. I doubt media coverage was a significant factor--though some analysts now wonder if anti-Clinton coverage motivated female voters to come to the rescue of this damsel in distress. (That is, blame Chris Matthews.)
Now for my own mea culpa. I was carried away by hope. I try not to make political predictions and mostly resisted the urge this week. But when asked, I did say a double-digit victory was possible, if not likely, for Obama. Whoops. I should have stuck to my previous, pre-Iowa skepticism. Months ago, I did the math. Women, I noted, tend to vote in greater numbers than men. If Hillary could lock up a decent-sized majority (or plurality) of the women vote, she could be unstoppable. The math was simply overwhelming--particularly in a race involving her and multiple male candidates. Obama was facing a double gender-gap: more Democratic women voting in general, and more of those women supporting Clinton. I repeated this back-of-the-envelope analysis to Obama fans. No, I was told, hope will win out.
It did in Iowa. Obama did play well there among women. But then the women came home. Why? Partly because the Clinton campaign mounted an efficient get-out-the-gals organizing campaign in New Hampshire and made sure their appeal was just right for Democratic women. And perhaps because Democratic women did not want to see Hillary Clinton, the first woman with a shot of becoming president, so easily dispatched. (I'm not going to try to factor in--or out--the near-crying episode.)
To understand Clinton's appeal to Democratic women, several male reporters I know have turned to a very particular focus group: their mothers. Several colleagues have told me that they have heard from their moms on the subject of Clinton, usually with the mother sharing a positive view of the candidate. (In other words, treat her fairly!) After the results came in on Tuesday night, my mother weighed in. She emailed me, "I sort of wanted Obama to win, but was happy that she won." But Ma was also pleased that Clinton had not won "by a landslide." See the conflict? Democratic women do have a tough choice: between that reliable warhorse (of whom they may have mixed feelings) and that inspirational new guy. In South Carolina, African-American woman will be confronted by the same--and maybe more so.
Earlier in the race, it did seem rather noteworthy that the Democratic contest could produce either the first female nominee or the first black nominee of a major party. While that remains true, the contest appears to have hit the shoals of identity politics. And, boy, there's not much more than race and gender matters that commentators and pundits like to chew on (except, of course, sex). So in the next few weeks, as gender and racial politics overtly shape and perhaps define the presidential race on the Democratic side, there ought to be plenty of opportunity for us journalists (particularly us white-guy journalists) to get something wrong again.
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Comments
I think too many people and polls are too eager to make those calls based on very scarce data.
What else can the media do? Nobody would watch with interest any pundit that was cautionary and truthful.
Coming out of Iowa I thought the media would run with the "neck and neck" horse race as the numbers were so close. I was surprised a bit by the coronation of Obama.
The rubber will hit the road here in a few weeks - more actual data from actual primaries ought to help even white-guy journalists.
Posted by: capt
| January 10, 2008 12:36 PM
Hillary Clinton has a quality new to American presidential politics: the power of a woman to transform. Mrs. Clinton found her voice in New Hampshire; she found her true voice as a woman, in the best sense possible. As an accomplished professional woman, she has often had to suppress her personal voice. In New Hampshire we finally heard from the real HIllary Clinton, and the voting public welcomed her. The personal strength she showed in holding her family together, and the fine young woman that Chelsea has turned out to be were all finally set in context, all in addition to her professional accomplishments.
On election evening, I especially enjoyed the elegant verbal lashing of Chris Matthews delivered by Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams. Brokaw and Williams remembered their obligation to report the facts. Chris Matthews forgot his responsibility, and was totally flummoxed by Hillary Clinton, revealed. I love it.
Posted by: Polarbear
| January 10, 2008 1:03 PM
"the elegant verbal lashing of Chris Matthews delivered by Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams."
I missed that - I always like it when tweety gets slapped around a little.
Posted by: capt
| January 10, 2008 1:33 PM
If only the reporters and networks would report the news instead of trying to make the news. It does not matter who is first or who has the big scoop, only who is accurate and informative. Pundit opinions, no matter how "inside" are no longer informative. All the so-called coverage of the two early primaries and I still do not know one substantive stance on an issue of any of the candidates. Please report the facts, put them in context (factual, not opinion), and ask questions of the candidates that lead to informative concrete answers.
Posted by: akla
| January 10, 2008 2:04 PM
Don't justify your failure to predict the outcome of the race by pointing fingers at the Hillary campaign. That's ridiculous. Even if they knew she was ahead, why would they tell you?
"...Clinton folks in New Hampshire had the look of death on their faces. They were telling reporters that the campaign was not working. They were saying that it would have to be retooled."
Posted by: Tina
| January 10, 2008 2:09 PM
Come on, everyone knows that the Clinton machine rigged those voting machines and registered out of state voters and dead people~~
Posted by: LBH
| January 10, 2008 2:13 PM
capt: I concur. Before Brokaw lit into Matthews, I was not aware of the division within NBC. Brokaw was classy enough not to mention Matthews by name, but after a 5-minute lecture on the PROPER role of journalism and the improper role of the pundits leading up to NH, it was quite clear what Brokaw was up to. Afterwards, Matthews was stammering. It sure elevated Brokaw and Williams in my estimation. Matthews and his crowd keep going beyond first level analysis to alternately coronate and then decimate candidates on their own. Like other voters, I resent their interference.
Posted by: Polarbear
| January 10, 2008 2:16 PM
Heck, I bet Vince Foster even voted for hillary!
Posted by: LBH
| January 10, 2008 2:16 PM
Much ado ...
Posted by: David B. Benson
| January 10, 2008 5:18 PM
From Mayor Bradley to Governor Wilder in Virginia to Mayor Dinkins in New York, black candidates usuallly poll substantially better than the actual results. Iowa was different because those were caucuses, not private voting in a booth.
There needs to be some kind of factor for this in all polling, especially in areas like New Hampshire that are about 95% white.
Posted by: Tomcantu
| January 11, 2008 9:04 AM
"There needs to be some kind of factor for this in all polling"
I can't imagine the pollsters are unable to factor in race. They weigh every other factor when making predictions. Race has always been an issue.
Seems more like poor polling or flawed process than a revelation or need for new data.
Posted by: capt
| January 11, 2008 9:51 AM
The polling was correct - Queen Hillary stole the election folks!
Dennis Kucinich alluded to online reports alleging disparities around the state between hand-counted ballots, which tended to favor Sen. Barack Obama, and machine-counted ones that tended to favor Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He also noted the difference between pre-election polls, which indicated Obama would win, and Clinton's triumph by a 39 percent to 37 percent margin.
Posted by: LBH
| January 11, 2008 12:25 PM
In most ever data set or poll taken there will inevitably be some points, people, or opinions that fall far outside the expected or calculated center or what is deemed reasonable. With smaller data sets, such as many of the ones used in polling, it is even more common for erroneous or faulty data to appear. The better they are at identifying and eliminating or smoothing these data sets the more accurate their results will be.
So our next question would be, who do you eliminate from your sample? If you were a 55 year old women that had never voted in a primary before you are in the bottom 1% they really are not focused on. They are either going to weight your response accordingly or ignore it completely. On the other side there was a seemingly ‘trend’ appearing out of Iowa. The pollsters most likely identified a new phenomenon with the increase in youth vote that occurred in Iowa and factored that in as not being outliers now but within the predicted medians when polling in New Hampshire. What this gave us were polls showing a commanding lead for Obama going into Election Day.
Bottom line though, there are truly no new lessons here and nothing that people much smarter than me that do this day in and day out don’t already know. They will most likely archive the data, place New Hampshire behind them, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and keep going and look at this primary and those results as the outlier falling far outside the statistical norm compared to their many other polls
Posted by: politicalnumbers
| January 11, 2008 9:09 PM
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