As a loyal Obama-backer, I feel a little shaken this morning. It's bad enough to lose, but my expectations were so high--Iowa and the polls all suggested Obamania was a wave that really had legs.

That's the sort of thing that happens to people who eagerly assume that a couple of hundred thousand people in a small mid-Western state are representative of the nation and are saying what people want to hear. The same goes for Clinton and McCain fans. New Hampshire is not representative of the nation. The only conclusion that we can draw from both states is that we will very likely get the same choice we have been given in most elections: Choose between the lesser of two evils - or the least of three. And most voters will likely choose the would-be emperor with the most stylish suit - or eloquence.

I agree,

I too am a bit mystified and let down by the N.H. results:

Congratulations to Clinton, for sure. I am surprised by her success and am still trying to figure out a) what was the cause of her unexpected win and b) what, if anything does this bode for her in upcoming primaries.

Sorry to see Obama not continue his inspirational lead. However, it was after all only a 2% loss to Clinton and he has the same number of delegates. He has his work cut out for him, but I also believe he can deliver.

Edwards' result is even more troubling. Although it is true that "99% of Americans haven't been heard", the impact of these two primary results does not bode well for him. I'd love to see the three "top tier" candidates trade spots for the remainder of the primary season.

Am also sorry to see that Richardson, Kucinich, Biden, Gravel, and Dodd received less than 7% of the votes combined. The more candidates that stay viable, the more dynamic and interesting the primary season remains, imho.

Bill, I think we are all being very presumptous about Obama. He is not very experienced and Hillary was right in the last debate to speak about experience. Obama may show a lot of "charisma" but honestly he is a junior senator from IL with limited experience. Hillary has been involved and more accomplished both directly and indirectly (being an active first lady in Arkansas and ofcourse 10 years in the white house). Lets not make the same mistake that was made with George Bush Jr. Lets "think" before we leap for charisma. I think Hillary would be a better President. She is smart, poised and she has show in New Hampshire that she can fight back. She is a fighter.

The NH primary and the tactics of the Clintons and their surrogates convinces me this is all about the Clinton dynasty and their desire to hold onto power at any cost. There is nothing to congratulate her about, if you use 9/11 the fear card, if you use surrogates to plant innuendos that Obama is either a former drug dealer, or perhaps a Manchurian candidate because he's really a Muslim terrorist, if you send out mailings planting lies about your opponents record on choice and taxes. Integrity does matter. There has been serious damage to the relationship the Clintons have enjoyed with the African American community, and that will translate when it comes to the way they look on the Democratic party establishment. Their desire to hold on to power at any cost really threatens the coalition that holds the party together. That said, I think Obama, now with the support of the culinary union and the SEIU has a good shot at Nevada caucuses, and in SC where the African Americans are shifting to him in droves. That will position him well for Feb. 5. Hillary still doesn't have a rationale for her to be elected, other than her gender and her experience, most of which is being fist

(my apologies, I hit the return before I finished the post) continued: Hillary still doesn't have a rationale for her to be elected, other than her gender and her experience, most of which is being first lady. Obama will flesh out his themes of generational change of politics and policies and inclusion and what that would mean for America. Personally I've had it with politics that are about the Clintons and their ambition and their relationship, and their angst. The 90s are done with, Thank God. I remember the Clinton Camelot with a lot of anguish, as we lost Congress to the Republicans and had to defend Clinton from being removed from office because of his personal failings. Let's get it over with.

Carl is right--the system is set up to be all about delegates, although after 1988 it didn't seem to matter.

Last night I sent this to a friend who is an Edwards backer. It may or may not be the most accurate, but it is interesting. Does it include superdelegates? How solid are they at this point?

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/ 2026 needed, Clinton 187 Obama 89 Edwards 50

To add my two cents to this article, it's interesting to see the break-down of those who supported each of the Democratic front-runners. Obama seems to be preferred by independents, and it's interesting to see how women will continue to choose between him and Hillary. He enjoyed their support in Iowa, but they switched back to Hillary in New Hampshire. Check www.projectweightloss.com for an interesting and somewhat unusual survey of the characteristics of each of the Democratic candidates' supporters.

To add my two cents to this article, it's interesting to see the break-down of those who supported each of the Democratic front-runners. Obama seems to be preferred by independents, and it's interesting to see how women will continue to choose between him and Hillary. He enjoyed their support in Iowa, but they switched back to Hillary in New Hampshire. Check www.projectweightloss.com for an interesting and somewhat unusual survey of the characteristics of each of the Democratic candidates' supporters.

Here is a great analysis of the delegate count and how John Edwards can shape the party platform if he holds out until the convention.

GO JOHN EDWARDS!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

(Don't we have ANY mill town people on this board? jeesh)

Oops, forgot the link

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/9/115957/8561/622/433655

TO: Interested Parties FROM: David Plouffe DATE: January 9, 2008 RE: The Next Four Weeks

Coming off an impressive win in Iowa and taking the once inevitable frontrunner down to the wire in her firewall state, it is clear that Obama is well-positioned to become the next President of the United States. As the people of Iowa and New Hampshire demonstrated, the American people desperately want change they can believe in. Barack Obama is the candidate to deliver that change by bringing people together, standing up to the special interests, and telling people what they need to know.

Our campaign now turns its focus squarely to Nevada and South Carolina, and February 5th. Today, we kick off the next phase of our campaign in New Jersey, an important February 5th state.

Fundraising

In the 4th Quarter of 2007, our campaign raised $23.5 million - over $22.5 million of which is for the primary election. In that quarter, we added 111,000 new donors for a total of 475,000 donors in 2007.

In the first 8 days of 2008, we raised over $8 million and gained 35,000 new donors. Since midnight last night, we have raised another $500,000 online. We continue to build a grassroots movement that makes us best-positioned to compete financially in the primaries and caucuses coming up.

Nevada

We have built the same caucus operation in Nevada as we did in Iowa, with focused and effective precinct captains in over 95 percent of the precincts in the state, and multiple captains in many precincts. We have also been reaching deep into the electorate, securing commitments to caucus from habitual Democratic voters, general election voting Democrats and Independents.

In a significant boost to our efforts, we received the endorsement of the SEIU local in Nevada late last night.

This is the first time Nevada has had a precinct caucus so organization is paramount, both in terms of shaping the overall electorate as well as the added challenge of getting voters to locations that are unfamiliar to them. South Carolina

We have seen dramatic movement in South Carolina since Iowa, resulting in healthy double-digit leads for Senator Obama in recent public polling. We have by far the strongest organization in the state according to neutral observers and believe that, as the gateway to February 5th, South Carolina will provide our campaign enormous momentum heading into those twenty-two states.

Obama also has the support of several key political figures in South Carolina, including former Governor Jim Hodges, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, and former party chairs Joe Erwin and Dick Harpootlian.

February 5th

We now have staff in nineteen of the twenty-two February 5th states and will be adding to the remaining three - Delaware, Arkansas and Connecticut - by the end of the week.

In the six caucus states - Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, Idaho, Alaska and North Dakota - we have been engaged in heavy organizing and voter contact. In many of these states, our opponents are not engaged in any organizing. We firmly believe you cannot build a caucus operation in a matter of four weeks, so we are at a decided advantage in these states where we have already identified tens of thousands of Obama supporters and where, in the last five days, the number of new volunteers and supporters has exploded. We are in the process of mailing past caucus-goers and our ID-ed supporters in those states. We are also preparing aggressively for vote-by-mail in states like California and Arizona, where we have mail pieces hitting this week and an exhaustive phone program in place to identify supporters and make sure those ballots are returned.

In all of the February 5th states, we have active chapters at most colleges and universities and are pursuing support from independent voters aggressively where they are permitted to participate, which is in most of the states. California and New Jersey, two states the Clintons have pointed to as firewalls, both will have healthy independent turnout in the

Democratic primary.

We expect to see a great deal of movement to Obama from superdelegates in the coming days, seriously eroding the Clintons’ existing advantage in this universe.

To fully execute a robust February 5th strategy, it will take tens of millions of dollars. Our financial picture is strong and growing stronger by the day, which will allow us to have a significant paid media presence to go alongside our grassroots operations in our target February 5th states.

We expect, as we begin to see significant national poll movement, that there will also be positive poll movement in the February 5th states. Obama saw substantial gains in the individual February 5th state polls in December opening up a lead in Georgia and seeing a seriously tightening race in California.

We will be releasing later today our final fourth quarter 2007 estimates, as well as some numbers for the first eight days of January for both dollars raised, as well as number of total donors and new donors acquired in these periods.

The coming weeks will be challenging and no doubt filled with more haphazard and relentless attacks, but we believe we could not be better positioned for the next twenty four states. Our goal is simple - to win as many states as we can in the next twenty-eight days.

Jeff, rest assured that there was no earthquake in New Hampshire last night. Just a slight tremor and a minor set back. Hillary just lit a fire under Obama's campaign and we will be working harder than ever. See above memo.

Earthquake?

I'm SHOCKED! Shocked that the New York senator won New Hampshire over Obama and the Southerner.

Take a chill pill and enjoy the popcorn. We finally get a 50 state race.

I think we Democrats often lose sight of the fact that in this elections cycle, despite Bill Boden's (sic) take, a bevy of riches.

Please explain this "bevy of riches" to me. Before Biden and Dodd dropped out there were four candidates who violated their oaths to defend the Constitution and voted for this disastrous war on Iraq. Two are still in the running. The two primary leaders are taking big money from corporations. Hillary from Rupert Murdoch among others. John Edwards was manipulated into voting for the war, which should cause people to question what would happen if he were president and Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer leaned on him, Tip O'Neill to Carter style, to continue the war. Bill Richardson has his own skeletons in his closet. How about the way he went along with the shafting of Weng Ho Lee at Los Alamos when Richardson was energy secretary. Also, see Greg Palast in "Armed Madhouse" on Richardson going along with the rigging of votes in New Mexico in 2004. We will not get anyone pure as the proverbial driven snow which means we will all have to compromise, but let's not be so naive and gullible as to think our particular candidate is a knight in shining armor coming to Lady Liberty's rescue.

Here's my delegate count of just the two states that have held a primary election thus far. So far, Obama is still in the lead, FWIW:

New Hampshire: Obama: 9 + 3 Supers = 12 Clinton: 9 + 2 Supers = 11 Edwards: 4 + 0 Supers = 4

Iowa: Obama: 16 + 2 Supers = 18 Clinton: 15 + 2 Supers = 17 Edwards: 14 + 3 Supers = 17

Totals: Obama: 30 Clinton: 28 Edwards: 20

source: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/candidates/#1746

while we all agree the war sucks, for those who are so sure that obama wouldn't have voted for the war if he'd been in the senate when the vote was taken, please see the following:

"Obama has also said repeatedly that while he would have voted against the war in 2002 based on what he knew at the time, he could not be sure that classified intelligence reports made available to senators wouldn't have changed his mind.

In yesterday's conference call, he had no such doubts. "I am certain that I would have voted to oppose this war," he said."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/03/22/obama_defends_votes_in_favor_of_iraq_funding/

now, please bear with me here for a moment. so if obama had been feeling like he did in paragraph two of the above quote instead of the way he felt in paragraph one, and if he had been in the senate at the time that vote was taken, he may or may not have chosen to 'violate his constitutional oath' in the way that all but 23 senators chose to do. my point being, obama wasn't even in the senate at that time, so fortunately for him he gets a great big pass on this 'iraq war purity' test that gets hurled around in these democratic primaries. since obama wasn't in the senate then and didn't vote yea or nay on the debacle in iraq, all we have to go by are the votes he has since cast, in which he (like hillary) has voted for every penny bush has asked for to further the conflict in iraq. it's a crappy situation, but obviously both hillary and obama, opponents of the war in iraq, have for some reason felt the need to continue funding it.

having said that, i am firmly in the camp of those who feel that as democrats, we have the choice of greater goods and not lesser evils in the primary. whoever wins the primary, we can assume that if they then go on to win the general in november one of the first priorities will be ending the war in iraq.

backbeat12,

although hillary is my candidate, while i live in the big P now, my first job after high school was millwork in central oregon, so you aren't the only milltown son here.

As a first time around feminist -- I'm supporting Obama not Clinton. I learned early on that having a woman in position of power -- Margaret Thatcher anyone -- is not necessarily better. And her kind of feminism doesn't really question authority - it simply wants a piece of it. Not that Clinton is like Thatcher... but her record says she is a hawk and she is conservative (small c) on many issues. She's been subjected to a lot of ugly sexist trashing I grant you. But that doesn't mean she deserves your vote. Her political "experience" means she can play hard, but I don't see her record as very honest or principled. She's a dealmaker. Corporate corruption won't lessen if she were to be elected. Worst of all she would polarise the country and we would end up with the same boring old politics that takes us exactly nowhere.

Perhaps I'm wrong about Obama. Maybe he is not as smart and progressive and honest as he seemed here in Portland last October. Maybe his appeal to Independents and Republicans even doesn't mean he would have a better chance of actually winning the presidency and effecting change. Maybe his history of working humbly to serve low-income people is not a sign that he will bring integrity to the presidency. Maybe he is not the only candidate who can take us beyond the current stalemate and move the USA beyond its current belligerent, selfish foreign policy. But then again -- maybe he is the president we need.

That's not to belittle your point, which I believe is a very valid one. But the way you've framed it seems to me to go to Mitch's point about making the perfect the enemy of the good.

I believe my points about (a) not expecting a candidate to be as pure as the driven snow and (b) a need to compromise contradicts the argument that I'm making "perfect the enemy of the good." What I'm concerned with is the way the voting public sees only good while being blind to the anything-but-good. As an independent I can see it in both parties. For Democrats wondering what people were thinking about when they were cheering warmonger McCain who claimed to be devoted to telling the truth despite talking out of both sides of his mouth over the last seven years, that is how others react to cheering of Hillary and others with their baggage.

As for Hillary's tears that impressed so many gullible women (and probably men too) in New Hampshire, I would have been more impressed if she had shed tears for the dead and wounded returning from the Iraq war that she helped make possible and continues to support.

As I said at the outset, we can find fault with anyone, and I mean anyone who stands for public office,...

Very true, but there are faults and there are faults. Some we should accept as part of human frailty and move on, but others should remain indelible in our minds. Surely, we should remember those who allied themselves with Bush to go to war on Iraq and got us into this mess and continue to support it. I give John Edwards a lot of credit for admitting to having been wrong, but I remain concerned that he allowed Bob Shrum to persuade him to vote for the war against his better judgment.

I would have been more impressed if she had shed tears for the dead and wounded returning from the Iraq war that she helped make possible and continues to support.

if you are referring to continued voting to fund the war, by that rationale obama supports the war too...

oops. end italics after the first paragraph of my last post...

On her war vote she (Hillary) said at the time that it was an extremely difficult decision; she did not rush headlong into war beating the drum, she was reluctant. But let's keep the record straight: a vast majority of Americans (around 75% if I recall) supported the war authorization at this time, and this is supposed to be a representative Democracy.

Bottom line: She got it wrong while approximately 25% of the American people, a similar percentage in Congress, and millions of people around the world got it right. If she were to plea bargain this charge in my book she would have to accept at least that she was incompetent. We don't need another incompetent in the White House. There was plenty of evidence to be very skeptical about claims put out by the Bush Administration, and if in a court of law a guilty verdict requires a juror to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, then surely a decision to go to war demands something similar - at a minimum.

But our democracy decided to go to war in 2002 based on the information available; America did this because the Bush/Cheney administration lied.

Chris: I hate to appear ungrateful after you agreed with me, but I disagree with the above from your comments. There was evidence from Hans Blix and Scott Ritter of UNMOVIC that it was unlikely that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Some of the Bush Administration's claims were too preposterous to believe. Iraq was a threat to the United States after it had been whipped in the first Gulf War and after ten years of sanctions? Three members of the senate intelligence committee (Bob Graham, Dick Durbin and Ron Wyden), which was getting the true story, voted against the authorization for the use of military force (AUMF). That should have prompted other senators and representative to ask questions. I find it hard to believe that senators with all their contacts in Washington didn't get some tips from insiders that the propaganda from the Bush Administration was just that - propaganda!

Fair enough opinion, but just to be clear and consistent: you feel that any Senator who voted for war should at least be considered incompetent.

So that standard must apply equally to Edwards, Dodd, and Biden as well, right?

Yes. And all 77 of them. And note "at least incompetent." I would assign that to Edwards and a more criminal charge to the rest. Personally, I believe they should all be impeached along with Bush and Cheney.

Edwards takes votes from Obama? One is a progressive and one is pretty rhetoric. If Obama wants those votes then some actual progressivism is called for.

Um, credit card bill, class action "reform", 2nd A, this guy's list of problems is pretty long and tough to hang progressive on. Authoritarians stomp on the BOR and I've had that. I vote policy, not race, gender, religion, or other crap - either way.

Bill Bodden:

One thing I've noticed you sidestep the past couple days is how you can claim that Hillary supports the war and Obama doesn't when they both vote to keep funding it. Leaving aside for a moment your desire to impeach virtually every member of the Senate for authorization of the war, I'd really like to see your rationale behind my above observation.

It is unforgiveable that Hillary unleashed the fear card 2 days ago..right out of the Rove playbook. "the enemy is still out there, i'm the only one that can handle it. fear fear fear."

A long list Flag burning amendment Video game censorship Being so stupid as to vote for the iraq resolution when the rest of us knew it was lies and crap refusing to admit that vote was in error refusing to lead in the senate, i.e. filibustering until the war profiteers are stopped shall I go on?

Remember back in 2006 she came to Portland, appearing to test the early waters of her presidential campaign. She was already LOADED with New York $, corporate $, but yet had the temerity to come to Portland to raise money for HERSELF. I got the email and was very offended that she wasn't using her considerable star power to raise money for our local Democratic candidates. I mentioned this on the Thom Hartmann show and called the party, who were mum on the topic because they clearly didn't like it either but didn't want to diss Hillary. Eventually she was guilted into giving the party a paltry sum of her total take from the area.

This is a perfect example of how she, Bill and their cronies are more interested in building the DLC rather than the Democratic Party. She of all people knows there truly is a "vast rightwing conspiracy", yet she pisses on the very people who should be her base. As a woman, this makes me doubly sick.

I called her office several times in 2003 and 04 to ask whether she had recommended that Chelsea join the military and Hillary/George's war. The staffer promised to get back to me, but nadda.

No, I can't morally bring myself to vote for a WOMAN who would send my sons to their deaths for her oil wars.

STAY IN TIL THE CONVENTION EDWARDS...

Hillary one of the most liberal Senators? That's proof positive of how far Bill Clinton took the party to the right, refusing to build it to his benefit and our expense in 1994.

Good thing my glass somehow stays nearly full.

Don't get too down Jeff. Looks like maybe all those polls showing Obama ahead in New Hampshire may have been right after all. Bradblog sums it up pretty well here (at bradblog). I'd be very surprised if someone in Hilary's camp did something nefarious (it could have been anyone), but something smells fishy in New Hampshire and it's not the leftover lobster.

Did Obama lose the New Hampshire primary?

75% of NH votes are cast on Diebold optical scan machines and counted by LHS Associates, whose owner John Silverstro, has been the subject of numerous voter fraud investigations by independent researchers.

Polls showed Obama winning big:

Zogby poll done Jan 5-7:

Clinton 29% Obama 42% Edwards 17% Richardson 5% Kucinich 2% Undecided 5%

Here's the results:

Clinton 39% Obama 36% Edwards 17% Richardson 5% Kucinich 1% Uncounted 2%

Notice how close the polls were on the rest of the candidates.

Here are the Republican numbers:

Zogby Poll of Jan 5 -7:

McCain 36% Romney 27% Huckabee 10% Giuliani 9% Paul 9% Thompson 2% Hunter 1% Undecided 5%

Election Results:

McCain 37% Romney 31% Huckabee 11% Giuliani 9% Paul 8% Thompson 1% Hunter 1% Uncounted 2%

Almost exactly correct.

So what happened? The media suggest that Clinton's teary eyes made the difference. Why, then, did all of Hillary's extra votes come from Obama supporters? Are they the only ones who love wet-eyed candidates?

Now, I am not suggesting that the Clinton campaign stole the NH vote, but it is possible that Republican leaning corporations did not want Clinton eliminated from the primaries. Now, there is no evidence of this at this point, but this looks like something that should be checked out. After all, the vote counting/tabulating machines in question are the same ones that have been shown to be hackable.

That should be election fraud not voter fraud. Republicans try to say voter fraud is rampant so they can pass laws to exclude democratic voters like ID requirements (modern poll taxes). Voter fraud is actually extremely rare. However, election fraud may very well have happened in every presidential election since 2000 (as well as many others). Problem is we can't be sure because electronic voting machines like the Diebold ones in New Hampshire are easily hackable and no one seems to want to count the actual ballots. We've given up control of our public elections to private corporations.

Many precincts in New Hampshire hand count their ballots. If the hand counted precincts break for Obama and the Diebold precincts break for Clinton then we will know the fix is in. Has anyone seen a comparison?

What happened was what made the pollsters look stupid when Truman beat Dewey even though a newspaper headline said otherwise.

Exit polls aren't necessarily scientific, and the pollsters quit polling days before the voting started.

Sometimes there are election surprises. I doubt Diebold had anything to do with the 1948 election.

Here's an analysis of the Diebold versus hand-counted ballots. I have no idea if this information is reliable, so seek confirmation before taking to the streets.

I will be working for whomever wins the D nomination.

Supreme Court Supreme Court Supreme Court Supreme Court

strange coming from an atheist, but i say 'amen to that.' the bickering on this post has degnerated to such an insultive, personal level as to become meaningless to me. if hillary wins the nomination and you hate her that much, don't vote for her! vote for no one, or for huckabee or giuliani or bloomberg the moron billionaire who may just be able to derail whichever democrat we put out there anyway. just don't try to get everyone to drink the 'obama is our only hope and hillary is the devil' koolaid because a lot of us ain't buying it. in all likelihood the nominee will already be decided by the time we get to vote in the primary anway. peaceout.

Well the NH tremor has come to a dead stop. Following the big union endorsements that Senator Obama received in Nevada yesterday, and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, more big news today.

Senator John Kerry, you may remember him as the Dem nominee for President in 2004 ;) is endorsing Senator Barack Obama. That is quite a testimony in light of the fact that his former running mate Edwards, as well as Hillary, are in the race.

lestatdelc,

People who suspect foul play behind the scene often express their doubts as certainties, and people who prefer to dismiss such suggestions as "lunacy" reject concerns without consideration. The Daily Kos post you link to falls in the latter category.

• Although most towns in NH hand count, 80% of the state's ballots are computer tabulated.

• A paper trail allows confirmation; it does not provide it. It is very unlikely that a campaign would challenge the results of an early primary election, as this would expose its candidate to charges of being a spoil sport.

That DK post is no more proof that the vote was not rigged than the polling/vote count discrepancy is proof that it was rigged. Voting results that fall outside of reasonable predictions should be investigated. That is how integrity is preserved. Using terms like "lunacy", "garbage", and the ever-handy "conspiracy theory" do not preserve integrity, they only polarize us.

[BTW, the post lestatdelc responded to was from me. Jane had used my computer and hijacked its auto-form fill function.]

but this comment is a bit beyond the pale: "Choose between the lesser of two evils - or the least of three. And most voters will likely choose the would-be emperor with the most stylish suit - or eloquence."

This is in response to comments objecting to the concept that we will get a common choice for president - the lesser of two evils or the least of three.

Since this is a "Democratic" site I won't undertake the unnecessary task of explaining the evils on the Republican side but will offer suggestions as to why the Democrats are not as virtuous as their supporters would like to believe. (That's one of the problems of being linked to a group. People tend to see only the problems with their opponents and not those of their friends.)

There is the support for war on Iraq which has been addressed above, an event from which the front runners appear to have learned nothing. As soon as the Bush Administration recycled their war-on-Iraq propaganda by replacing Iraq with Iran in the script, they all agreed that war on Iran was an option. The "evidence" again was Bush Administration propaganda, mainstream media echoes and polls saying the gullible masses agreed. No profiles in courage there.

All three of the leading Democratic candidates have indicated that whatever the Likud and Kadima parties in Israel and American neocons want is okay with them. Where were Hillary's tears when the Israeli forces over-reacted to Hezbollah and shot up ambulances and civilian cars fleeing north from the Israel border with women and children? Where was the great orator's call to end this carnage? Where was John Edwards' concern for the poor and fleeing masses?

Where are Hillary's tears, Obama's oratory and Edwards' concern for the Palestinians suffering from a crime against humanity in Gaza inflicted by their friends in the Likud and Kadima parties. It is not just the Palestinians and bleeding-heart liberals crying out against this barbarism. There are many honorable and courageous people of Jewish heritage, including a minority in Israel, opposed to this horror: Uri Avnery, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Jewish Voice For Peace, Tikkun, etc.

The difference between Hillary, Obama and Edwards and Bush, Cheney and the neocons is that the latter group are prepared to be pro-active in committing war crimes; whereas, the Democratic trio are not. However, they appear to be willing to go along with the mob when they are roused by propaganda from the White House and the mainstream media. Unfortunately, the consequences are the same.

pdxatheist: You interpreted my criticism of Hillary above as giving Obama a pass. I trust the above will persuade you that I am not blind to Obama's shortcomings. Nor am I blind to his virtues, but I'm concerned that the former will prevail over the latter. His oratorical skills could do much to elevate the discourse in our society, but that will depend on how much substance he has and what he really believes.

Senator John Kerry, you may remember him as the Dem nominee for President in 2004 ;) is endorsing Senator Barack Obama. That is quite a testimony in light of the fact that his former running mate Edwards, as well as Hillary, are in the race.

Yes, it is a testimony to the fact that John Kerry long ago lost his fight. Thom Hartmann reminded us this AM that he and Edwards had a huge fight over Ohio, and of course now we know Edwards was right.

GO EDWARDS!!!

Voting results that fall outside of reasonable predictions should be investigated.

Tom C., why do you give pollsters such credit? The only way you can believe that the NH results fall outside a "reasonable" prediction is if you believe that polling is a precise science.

It is not science, it is art, and they actually get things wrong all the time. Polling fails to account for changes in turnout (in NH, older women turned out in much larger numbers than the polls expected), and it fails to account for undecided voters (of which almost 38% were undecided in the 3 days before the NH primary -- although you have to believe the exit poll to believe that number :)

The part of the Kos story that was right on, however, was that if any of the results were suspect, the other campaigns would be screaming about it. You suggest that they're too risk averse for that, but trust me, if they saw something that didn't look right they'd find ways to use it to question the outcome.

Finally, the problem with "investigating" every outcome that doesn't conform to some preconceived notion of what it should be is that it works both ways. Why not investigate Obama's Iowa victory where he was trending down in the days before? Could there have been some funny business at the caucuses? Were payouts made to attendees to support Obama?

Of course not. Obama won Iowa. Clinton won NH. Pollsters generally suck at their trade.

Kucinich Seeks NH Dem Vote Recount

TJ -- Statistical sampling and regression analysis is an exact science. Political polls are a weak derivation of statistical sampling that usually are beset by all of the things that statisticians try to avoid. For example, it's incredibly difficult to get a random sample in a poll, and without a random sample the poll is essentially meaningless. You can't control who's home, who chooses to answer questions, who owns a land line, and who tells the truth. Pollsters weight their results to account for these factors -- and they often get it right -- but those weights are simply an educated guess.

And what Zogby does by aggressively weighting his samples based on his theories is just slightly more suspect than what all pollsters do. I think I read somewhere that a review of Zogby's work shows he's just as close to actual results as other pollsters with more traditional methods, but I couldn't find it when I just searched.

Bottom line, though, is that polls are only as good as the data that goes into them. And the data is usually very bad. When you see a "shift" like we just saw in NH, it's possible that tens of thousands of people changed their minds in the last 24-48 hours, but it's more likely that the pollsters just got the assumptions wrong about turnout, demographics, etc.

Zogby himself said that 2000 was the first year where, for Zogby, polls were way off results. There's a reason that polls are compared against the official tally. And, regardless of those who wish to explain away the shift from Obama to Clinton (with other candidates being close to polling prediction / assessment), I think that such a discrepancy deserves official investigation. Who here thinks that Bush won in 2000 and 2004? Who thinks that there wasn't a "red-shift" in the 2002 and 2006 Federal races? Why should primaries for the Democratic Party be exempt from similar monkeying?

Kucinich (Mr. Integrity himself as far as I'm concerned) seems to think there may be a problem, and has asked for a recount.

"The Ohio congressman cited 'serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors' about the integrity of Tuesday results."

"In a letter dated Thursday, Kucinich said he does not expect significant changes in his vote total, but wants assurance that '100 percent of the voters had 100 percent of their votes counted.'"

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hI6F-VhnmJPDIgAFnfu6VPHpqapAD8U3EBKG0

Right, Kucinich actually won in a landslide.

Back in this universe, is this piece of Hillary Clinton's work in wide circulation, and does either Obama or Edwards have something comparable?

Very disappointing, lin qiao. Your summary dismissal of what I posted is very typical of what I would call the "neo-con mindset". Ridicule, but don't bother to address whatever issue is being raised.

Kucinich himself would not say that he won, or that he even placed 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. The only serious discussion on the integrity of the Democratic Party NH primary that I have seen is discussing the Obama/Clinton polling/official tally divide. Is it really so hard to believe that a candidate with integrity would ask for a recount not for himself, but for the sake of the integrity of the whole democratic process?

As far as the link you placed, it's pretty light-weight.

It says that Obama levels a false charge when he says that Clinton hasn't provided a solution for Social Security. It then provides her answer. "We will return to fiscal responsibility and fair tax policies first, and then we will address the long-term challenges facing Social Security."

Um, is it just me or is that not really an answer at all? Of course one needs money to fund Social Security. Thus, one needs fiscal responsibility. How is that obtained? Presumably with cuts in spending and/or "fair tax policies". "Fair tax policies" could mean quite a few things, and as far as fiscal responsibility goes, there are also quite a few questions. Since Hillary seems intent upon not getting us out of Iraq in any big hurry, and since she seems intent upon cutting the Health Insurance companies in on an even bigger piece of the pie, that begs the question as to just where her cuts in spending, or increases in tax, will come from.

If you're going to ask whether Edwards or Obama have come up with something similar, that might suggest that you think Hillary has actually said something solid?

Yes, I was admittedly flippant about Kucinich. I find it hard not to be. He strikes me as another Ralph Nader.

The point about the goofy Hlllary Clinton "facts hub" website I linked to above is that it is relentless nasty towards Obama (about much more than Social Security). Caveat emptor.

I have not heard anyone suggest who would be the person in a similar position in New Hampshire who would have risked a huge amount to throw the result to Clinton.

The Shaheen machine is supporting Clinton and it ain't exactly clean: Barack Obama's campaign leaders in New Hampshire demanded this morning that Hillary Clinton's campaign refrain from "gratuitous" character attacks

From the Rake's Progress: "In our story about Bill Shaheen’s shake-down of Hillary Clinton, we wrote:

In the latest case of political extortion, Bill Shaheen, husband of the once-popular three-time Democratic governor, Jeanne Shaheen, announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. From a citizen’s perspective, Bill Shaheen’s public service to the people of New Hampshire has consisted primarily of sleeping next to Jeanne Shaheen and holding her hand while she squirmed over the state’s education funding crisis (which she ultimately ignored). For playing that pivotal role, Bill is considered a state Democratic party power-broker, having worked on the Carter, Gore, and Kerry campaigns. His latest mark is Hillary Clinton.

No doubt Governor Shaheen’s greatest failure as governor was a failure of backbone – of putting politics over principle — exactly what Hillary Clinton is not willing to do herself.

For years, New Hampshire waited for an equitable solution to the education funding crisis and Jeanne Shaheen seemed the one positioned to do something about it. Instead she played a political game by offering solutions she knew darn well no one would accept (gambling), then she stalled and talked, stalled, and talked, and today our kids still receive a second-rate educations — not Shaheen and her friends’ kids, mind you, who can afford private high schools and colleges.

It is particularly upsetting that Hillary must get in bed with this failed Democrat who made too many compromises to either do something or stand for something to be effective. And now her husband, a professional hanger-on, has extorted a role in the next Clinton Administration.

Their collective shame hangs like an acrid pall over all of them."

Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire?

"There is good reason to be suspicious of the results. The counting of the machine totals, in New Hampshire as in all states using the Diebold machines, is handled by a private contract firm, in this case Massachusetts-based LHS Associates, which controls and programs the machines' memory cards. Several studies have demonstrated the ease with which the memory cards in the Accuvote machines can be hacked, with some testers breaking into the system in minutes. "

"Jonathan Simon, an attorney and co-founder of the group Election Defense Alliance, says that the vote discrepancies between machine and hand counts in New Hampshire's Democratic primary are troubling, and defy easy explanation."

"The trouble is, whenever you have a surprise result in an election, and it runs counter to the polls, the media always say the problem is the polling, not the counting." But he adds, "The thing is, these things always work in one direction-in favor of the more conservative candidate, and that defies the law of quantum mechanics."

"Personally I wonder if those suggesting that someone threw the results to Clinton aren't agents provocateurs trying to sow discord among Democrats."

I am more of that point of view than of the "it was the machines throwing the election".

What was the turnout in the college precincts which Obama was counting on? Was anyone impressed at the last minute by Clinton, upset by something Obama said, decide at the last minute?

Perhaps that is because I have campaigned for people who were not expected to win. These things happen. (George Allen didn't blame voting machines when he lost to the new Sen. Jim Webb.)

To give a very small example of what can turn an election, here is a story from a local school board race years ago. Many people woke up on election day intending to vote for the man they were absolutely sure would defeat the woman in what had been a really nasty school board race. Except the morning of a polling place election the man had sign wavers or whatever which caused a traffic jam and made some people late to work. There were people in that traffic jam who decided to vote for the woman on their way home from work because they were upset at being late to work due to the traffic jam.

I tell this story to say I wasn't in NH, so I don't know for sure what happened. But I don't put my faith in blogs and exit polls. I'm old enough to be aware of the "Bradley effect" named after the black mayor of LA who lost a statewide election. People said they supported him when polled, then voted for the white candidate who won.

I'm also old enough to think Obama's "you're likeable enough, Hillary" debate comment might have turned off some women who have dealt with upstart bright young men in the workplace. And as I understand it, there were a lot of independents voting.

Now if some experts want to dissect the NH election results pct. by pct., that would be one thing. But for Pete's sake, this is one primary, not a general election.

I'll register NAV after our primary before I'll buy the argument that to be a good Democrat is to believe that exit polls are infallible and if the results are different it is because of the voting machines. That may be the case, it may not be. I don't trust blogs, even those as famous as Counterpunch, without confirming evidence from other sources I trust.

This suggestion I've just made is of course ridiculous and paranoid, but no more so than the internally destructive suggestion that someone threw the New Hampshire election to Clinton.

Sheesh.

From the Washington Post Ombudsman:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR2008011103016.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Swing and a Miss in New Hampshire

By Deborah Howell Sunday, January 13, 2008; Page B06

Here's what happened in New Hampshire: Reporters lost their natural skepticism and took what they thought was happening and projected it far past the facts.

The experts were wrong, the polling a disaster. The Post, luckily, didn't poll late in New Hampshire and wasn't among those making a bad call. More on polling in a later column.

Even sage Dan Balz, The Post's senior political correspondent, missed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's resurgence. He said: "No one thought she would win, including her own people. Polling was misleading, but so, too, were signs on the ground. What happened is we all got swept up in a powerful story line and weren't attuned enough to signs to the contrary. That's the beauty of political reporting. It's always unpredictable and keeps us humble."

One of the most exciting campaign seasons in memory has sometimes blindsided The Post and other news media. A year ago, Clinton's nomination seemed a forgone conclusion. But reporters crowned her too early and, after Iowa, killed her too quickly. Barack Obama caught fire, and the flame blinded good sense……………………….

Stories about strategy and tactics are top-heavy with political gurus and light on what voters and interest groups have to say. Out of seven political stories in the A-section Thursday, only one quoted a voter………………………….

Political reporters and editors, stay skeptical. If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Great concluding line! No one is required to believe the above, or to believe Counterpunch, or to believe any other source (blog, news report, etc.).

I am enjoying the fact that the nomination fight may well go on for awhile, or as some have said, "it may turn out to be about delegates after all".

We are all speculating to explain how Clinton won in NH. It could be fair and square or rigged. Regardless, we should hope qualified, impartial people will investigate thoroughly to, if for no other reason, let the politicians and their campaign staffs know they are being scrutinized and, hopefully, keep them honest as much as possible.

This might be of interest:

http://nationaljournal.com/brownstein.htm

Democrat Barack Obama, who finished a step behind Hillary Rodham Clinton, was equally emphatic. "We are ready," Obama told his reverent audiences, "to come together as Democrats and Republicans and independents and say that we are one nation, we are one people, and our time for change has come." ................. So more collaboration between the parties will demand more substantive concessions than the top contenders have offered so far. But tone matters, too. Obama and McCain (and, to varying degrees, their rivals) are presenting a vision that rejects the bruising 50-plus-one focus on maximizing partisan unity that has guided President Bush -- and which both parties' most confrontational voices are still demanding.

Indeed, Obama's ascent has come amid fierce attacks on his partisan loyalty from liberal "Net-roots" leaders such as Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos (who meant it as no compliment when he recently described Obama as "the return of Bill Clinton-style triangulating personified"). New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, another liberal leviathan, recently stamped Obama as "the anti-change candidate" for peddling the "fantasy" that "the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation." McCain has long faced similar scorn from conservatives for compromising with Senate Democrats on issues from campaign finance to judicial nominations.

LT,

Why do you react so emotionally to people raising concerns? The concerns arise because:

• Clinton did substantially better and Obama substantially worse than late polling suggested, though the polls were very close predictors of the other candidates' totals.

• Totals for Obama and Clinton in areas that used paper ballots largely agreed with late polling numbers. Clinton did substantially better than late polls suggested in areas that used optical scan machines.

• Diebold optical scan machines have been shown to be easily hackable.

Being concerned about this seems quite reasonable. Fortunately, the Diebold machines do produce a paper record, so a recount is possible, and Dennis Kucinich has requested such a recount. As long as his campaign comes up with the money to pay for it, we should find out if the voting fraud concerns were well-founded.

Given the insecurity of elections in the past eight years, this seems a prudent and worthwhile step. Your dismissal of this reasonable concern with election integrity as an "internally destructive suggestion" seems out of line to me.

You also suggest that someone claims good Democrats must believe the exit polls are infallible. Where did you come up with that straw man? And, if you are going to produce a straw man, at least do a better job of it. The concerns with vote counting in NH have nothing to do with exit polls.

Also, there is no reason to trust CounterPunch or any other blog beyond getting their facts straight [and the facts here are easily verifiable] and making reasonable arguments. The whole idea is to raise concern so the reliability of the vote counting will be checked. Whether hanky-punky is discovered or not, raising this concern seems quite reasonable to me.

I share your desire that the primary process goes on for awhile. I hope it goes on long enough for Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards to win the nomination. But however long it goes on, and whoever wins the nomination, I hope the votes are counted accurately.

If the New Hampshire authorities do a recount, that is fine. I'm just saying that in Oregon in mid-January with a lot of concerns which have nothing to do with primary results on the other side of the country, I will wait for a lot more evidence than I have seen so far to believe there was a voting machine problem rather than NH residents not voting as outsiders expected them to vote.

If Hillary Clinton had lost by 2 points, would you automatically believe those results were accurate?

Why do you react so emotionally to people raising concerns?

Instead of directing the above to anyone in particular, let's rephrase it: Why do people react so emotionally to people raising concerns?

One answer is that they see things in terms of black and white instead of some shade of gray that is more likely their true color. They are locked into their particular candidate and reject any suggestion that he or she can have any faults other than very minor ones. There are many problems with this behavior. One is that it makes an honest, fruitful debate very difficult - in some cases, impossible. (Trolls who pollute blogs are one of the most obvious examples of this point.) Another problem is that this attitude usually leads to self-deception.

Nader has endorsed Obama

WTF????? NOT TRUE....HE HAS ENDORSED EDWARDS. THE GUY WHO IS SUFFERING FROM AN ALMOST TOTAL CORPORATE MEDIA BLACKOUT.

GO EDWARDS. ALL 50 STATES. DON'T LET US DOWN, YOU SPEAK FOR MANY OF US MY MAN!!!! AND ELIZABETH TOO!!!!!!

AARGH!

Please...those of you referring to opinion polls as predictive tools: they're not. By definition not. And an election is not a laboratory experiment--the use of statistics does not easily translate.

If I ask my neighbor what he's going to have for dinner tomorrow, and he tells me that he's going to grill steaks, then actually winds up going out to our local Vietnamese joint for a bowl of noodle soup, do I spend time "analyzing" the "surprising" result and speculating about the dark forces that "subverted" my neighbor's clear intention?

Pat and lin are right!

And here is something else I have heard from Langer the ABC pollster and others.

Apparently all NH ballots have candidates in alphabetical order. That means Clinton then Edwards then Obama (with all the umpteen other NH presidential candidates in between).

Polls tend to randomize the order candidate names are presented. So why should they be accurate when voters end up looking at a ballot in alphabetical order?

I am Hillary's age and although I wouldn't vote for her I can understand women thinking she has gotten picked on. Then there is the closeness of Iowa and NH--such a short period compared to what usually happens.

This is one primary folks, and not for all that many delegates. In 1984 there was a big deal when Mondale complained about how the Wisconsin delegates were chosen--it turned out to be such a controversy it was one of the reasons the Fairness Comm. was set up during the 1984 convention.

Surprises happen in life--quit looking for sinister forces. Loved lin's dinner analogy.

LT asks:

"If Hillary Clinton had lost by 2 points, would you automatically believe those results were accurate?"

Automatically? No. But would those results conform more to the polls leading into the election, and thus be less suspicious of the numbers? Yes.

And, well, exit polls? You say that people place too much faith in them, but exit polling is very accurate. We only bother to hold them because they are so accurate, and because, when they're off, foul-play is suspected. Exit polls are the gold standard of democracy.

I think it's funny that, when exit polls deviate by a few percentage points in a country where the US doesn't like the results, we scream "foul" and we're usually correct in screaming it (except when the US itself sponsored the exit polling). Heaven forbid that we apply that same standard here.

I'm aware that NH exit polls are closer to the result that the "predictive" polls, but how much do I trust the polling companies not to cook the books after seeing screenshots of them doing it in 2004. There's an article linked to by somebody up above where the author suggests that there's nothing nefarious about adjusting exit polls to match the results. What hogwash. I think it was nefarious when "they" did it in Ohio in 2004, and I, while I fall short of saying that NH had foul play, I am concerned enough to support an investigation.

However, to advocate against my view, I would note that exit polls say that (assuming they're not cooked), as people have been choosing between Obama and Clinton in the days leading up to and including election day, they have fallen fairly evenly on either side. This suggests that polls showing Obama way out in from are at one limit of their certainty, and the opposite as well.

I wanted to add that I appreciate lin's point that polls leading up to the election are not predictive in an absolute sense, but they are still usually indicative of the outcome--the closer one gets to election day, the more likely I would be to consider them representative of the vote's outcome.

Pat may be right that women changed there votes at the last moment because they perceived that Hillary was picked on [or because of the Tear Effect], but why would that effect voters who used optical scan machines and not those who used paper ballots? The same question applies to LT's point about alphabetical ordering of candidates.

Again, I am not saying I believe fraud happened, but that enough question exists to look into the situation.

As to lin qiao's metaphor about his neighbor going out to dinner, polling is based on the predictability of the behavior of large numbers of people, not one individual.

In response to LT's suggestion that we stop looking for sinister forces, I believe that those who do not look out for sinister forces are destined to be victims of sinister forces.

Tom, here is my problem.

Your posts don't break down the vote by county, and you put a lot of faith in Zogby who may be very good at his job but is still a pollster.

Using search engines, I was able to find this list of NH counties.

Belknap, Carroll, Cheshire, Coos, Grafton, Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham, Strafford, Sullivan

I don't trust blogs, I trust official sources. If you can find a source which says, for instance, that Coos and Grafton counties used Diebold machines but Belknap and Carroll did not, then I might believe you when you say,

" but why would that effect voters who used optical scan machines and not those who used paper ballots".

Did whole counties use either paper or Diebold? Is there yet a county-by-county breakdown?

Are you saying that county clerks in NH are not involved in the vote counting process? "75% of NH votes are cast on Diebold optical scan machines and counted by LHS Associates, whose owner John Silverstro, has been the subject of numerous voter fraud investigations by independent researchers."

What is your source on that? If 25% vote on paper, are they geographically centered in particular counties?

I'm a fact checker. If someone says of an Oregon legislative district, "the last 3 candidates in that district got 40%" and upon checking I discover that only one of the last 3 got that high a vote total, I'm not inclined to trust the source of that "they all got 40% " report in the future.

It looks like you are using statewide numbers to imply something nefarious. If I want to see a greater (and official) breakdown of the results before I come to your conclusion (did Zogby break down the Jan. 5-7 poll by county or is it only statewide numbers?) does that make me a gullible person because "those who do not look out for sinister forces are destined to be victims of sinister forces"? If Obama was expecting larger turnouts in college towns than what actually happened, was that sinister or just lack of turnout?

I know there are people who get excited by theories like this, postings on BRADBLOG, etc. I would like to see more solid evidence before I believe in some grand conspiracy.

I think people who believe the vote fraud conspiracy theories actually WANT to find out that there is a nefarious, evil, corrupt cabal of Democratic operatives who are so powerful they can pull something like this off, even though it would have to include dozens of county clerks and untold numbers of elections staffers. This is either because they detest Clinton with such fervor that they cannot stomach that she might actually have won, or they're Republican operatives trying to foment discord.

Quite frankly, I have a hard time understanding why people are so freaked out about the possibility of a recount. The ability to verify a vote count is the whole reason for a paper trail in voting machines.

Because there just isn't any proof of foul play. People are looking at the goddamned POLLS that are not random nor scientific and using them as proof to discount the actual vote count, which has multiple checks and counter-checks to ensure accuracy. If Kucinich really wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars for the recount, that's his right under NH law. But seriously, where does it end? If you don't trust the initial count, why do you trust the recount? Why not a 2nd recount, or a 3rd? If you believe there is a broad, powerful conspiracy, why would THEY allow you to get an accurate recount?

You say that people place too much faith in them, but exit polling is very accurate. We only bother to hold them because they are so accurate, and because, when they're off, foul-play is suspected. Exit polls are the gold standard of democracy.

No, no, no, and no. Exit polling is conducted by 19 year olds who stand outside of polling stations and try to corner voters as they rush off to work. It is virtually impossible to get a random sample using this technique, and it has been proven that a significant portion of voters lie on exit polls because 1) they are annoyed that the pollsters don't respect the "secret ballot" and 2) they are annoyed because the questioners are making them late for work.

They only reason exit polls are done is because the news media desparately needs something to talk about beyond just "Candidate X won with 53% of the vote."

Is anyone watching Hillary on Meet the Press right now? This woman is presenting a very compelling argument about "who is ready on day one" and she is focusing on experience. Apparently the only legislative accomplishment that Obama could come up with in the NH debate was passing of a legislation that banned sit down lunches being paid for by lobbyists -- but they could be paid for if they were standing up. Are we all really thinking through this clearly as it pertains to Obama -- he is inexperienced. Do we want another inexperienced President?

This woman is presenting a very compelling argument about "who is ready on day one" and she is focusing on experience.

What experiences are those? Getting it wrong on Iraq? Voting for the Patriot Act? When Madeleine Albright said, "We thought it was worth it" ("it" being sanctions on Iraq that cost an estimated half million children their lives) was Hillary part of the "we" getting experience? What will she be ready to do "on day one"? Sign over another chunk of the mainstream media to Rupert Murdoch?

This woman is presenting a very compelling argument about "who is ready on day one" and she is focusing on experience.

More of Hillary's experience at work.

Except for Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul all the candidates get it wrong on Israel.

darrell, you might be more convincing if you had county-by-county information.

Imagine if you will that someone's polling on an Oregon election was wrong because the pollsters were from out of state and didn't realize the differences between Linn County, Lincoln County, Deschutes County and Douglas County. That is not imagination, a couple decades ago the DCCC refused to support a candidate who ended up losing in a recount because they believed the out of state DCCC pollster over the Oregon pollster.

Which of those polls you believe so strongly in were "likely voter " polls? A very smart campaign manager once told me she never believed a "likely voter" poll without being able to read the first 3 questions.

What was the turnout in college precincts and pcts with lots of older voters? Was that turnout exactly as predicted, or different?

What poll can measure the votes of people who decide in the last 24 hours? Is it possible to determine if everyone who was polled actually cast a ballot? If more voters who were "unlikely" according to pollster profiles cast votes than people who had been actually polled, is that the fault of the vote counting?

Believe there is something wrong with the election results if you want, but I reject the idea that polls are Gospel but election results should be questioned unless they conform to polls. And no, I don't own a string of pearls, so the crack "all of the pearl-clutching " did not make a positive impression.

If your favorite candidate wins in S. Carolina or Nevada and that isn't what the polls predicted, will you be upset about that?

75% of the country was in favor of war on Iraq because of false intelligence reports on weapons of mass destruction and Al-Queda in Iraq. Remember the infamous presentation at the UN by the Bush administration (Where is Colin Powell???). What did you expect Hillary and so many other democrats who voted for it to do?

Bill, if you don't watch out, someone's going to come into this thread and call you a "European Socialist".

Darrell: Thanks for the warning. I didn't expect to be called a "European Socialist" but I wouldn't be surprised to read some derogatory remarks or repetition of some that have already been expressed. That's the risk people take when they think independently and don't go along with some party's or candidate's manifesto. The consolation, I believe and hope, is that I don't get it wrong as often as I used to when I was allied with groups and felt some obligation to conform to the beliefs of the groups' members.

For the record I acquired much of my early political education reading "The Economist" when it was a respected journal with a reputation for being in the extreme middle. Unfortunately, like so many otherwise intelligent people that magazine's publishers made a lurch to the right during the Reagan and Thatcher years. I was also influenced by the writings of Peter J. Drucker. In the mid-20th Century he was known as the father of modern management and a respected figure in the corporate world, so he was no socialist. However, he held the opinion that there were three entities that a society required: business enterprises, government and non-profit organizations. The trick is to decide which work should be the responsibility of which entity, but the fact that he believed government should have some responsibility I believe made a case for some measure of socialism. This and the fact that those arch conservatives, Otto von Bismarck and Winston Churchill, promoted national health care systems suggests we in the United States would do well to consider adopting something similar ourselves.

Miles, on the contrary, yes, exit polls really are the gold standard of democracy. If they are not, then why did Carter send people to Venezuela to conduct an exit poll? On what leg, then, does America stand on when protesting results from other countries where exit polls are off from the official tally?

Exit polling is conducted by 19 year olds who stand outside of polling stations and try to corner voters as they rush off to work.

You know this age statistic because? And it's relevant because? And you know that voters are rushing back to work in spite of having legally-allotted time off for voting how? And, assuming that most people are in a rush, this skews the results of the polling how?

It is virtually impossible to get a random sample using this technique, and it has been proven that a significant portion of voters lie on exit polls because 1) they are annoyed that the pollsters don't respect the "secret ballot" and 2) they are annoyed because the questioners are making them late for work.

Why is it not random? If people are annoyed due to lack of respect of the secret ballot, do you have some data to show that this would skew one way or the other? If people are annoyed because they're late for work, then, again, how would that skew the data? If it's not random, then why would, again I'll just throw this example, Carter bother to exit poll in Venezuela? Why did Zogby say that his company called it right at a very high rate until 2000? And why would his company be successful in calling races until then, and suddenly not be?

I can provide references for my claims if you like, but yours? Please? I'd sincerely appreciate it. I'd read a few links. Truly! :)

Oh, some county-by-county data for you, since I didn't see anybody give you an answer... you'll see links on the left to county-by-county, and many other ways to look at the data. However, I have not seen exit-polling on a county-by-county basis. There may be no fraud here, but I am not ready to say so.

http://checkthevotes.com/

Bill, the implications that people who disagree with you about their approaches to electoralism don't think for themselves are arrogantly and unwarrantedly self-congratualatory and quite tired. You do yourself an injustice with them, as well as any number of other people in a different way.

Chris: I'm at a loss to figure out how you came to charge me with arrogance when I actually conceded that I do get things wrong on occasions: "The consolation, I believe and hope, is that I don't get it wrong as often as I used to ..." On a couple of past threads I admitted to getting a couple of points wrong and recently volunteered without prompting that suspicions I once expressed about Biden and Dodd were not justified. Not exactly the sort of thing arrogant people do. I recall reading very few similar concessions by other people commenting on this blog about getting it wrong, but I do recall several people making statements that were shot down by me and others without any response from the originator. This suggests to me that they were left without a rebuttal and couldn't bring themselves to admit to being wrong. Could it be that you didn't pay enough attention to the words "as often" in my statement above?

Or, is this where you are having a problem? "That's the risk people take when they think independently and don't go along with some party's or candidate's manifesto." The point here is that independent thinkers take risks disagreeing with parties and their members, but there is nothing in that statement that says the independent thinkers are automatically right and the parties and their members are wrong. My next sentence said that since I became independent I believe and hope that I get it wrong less often which concedes to some degree that people in the parties get it right when I am wrong.

Here's the first entry on Google, William, regarding exit poll accuracy.

It was written in 2004. Note that in just one example, the exit polls in the 2000 election were wrong in five states by anywhere from 7-16 points(!). Overall in 2000, the exit polls were right in only 19 states -- they overstated Gore's support in 22 states and Bush's support in 9 states.

You know this age statistic because?

My use of the "19 year-old" conducting exit polling was intended as a rhetorical device to illustrate the shaky foundation upon which exit polls rely. In reality, I'm sure that many of the pollsters are 20 years old.

Why is it not random?

Basic statistical problem of self-selection. The pollsters are only capturing the votes of those who choose to answer their questionnaires. Many refuse to answer. If the characteristics of those who refuse to answer are different than those of the general voting population (lean Democrat or Republican, young or old, highly educated or high-school only), then the sample is worthless. In order to account for this, those conducting the exit polls weight their results according to their assumed population characteristics. They often get it wrong.

And none of this accounts for people who lie to pollsters, which is becoming more common. When I voted in NJ and VA, I routinely lied to exit pollsters because I hate the fact that they use exit polls to project election results, instead of simply waiting an hour or two and getting ACTUAL results. Given the small sample sizes, one lie is often counted as thousands of votes.

What is absurd about this entire discussion, however, is the notion that we should somehow trust the POLLSTERS more than we trust our COUNTED VOTES. We of course have to be vigilant for vote and election fraud, but if the only evidence you have is that the polls didn't get it right, then you're standing on pretty thin ice.

Bill, the implications that people who disagree with you about their approaches to electoralism don't think for themselves are arrogantly and unwarrantedly self-congratualatory and quite tired. You do yourself an injustice with them, as well as any number of other people in a different way.

Chris: When I wrote my comments about being attacked by people who might have disagreed with an earlier comment I made above, I was thinking of two, among others, who did attack me on earlier threads. One used profanity, something I have never used unless you consider "BS" in that category. The other demonstrated he had a poor or selective memory. In both cases I responded to their comments. In both cases they apparently ceded the points to me - no comments, no apologies.

As for "electoralism" whatever that is but I presume to be to some degree synonymous with politics, I'm not absolutely against parties. I have stated many times that I support Steve Novick and have been complimentary towards a few others in the Democratic Party. I also went out of my way to help a candidate running against Greg Walden in 2006 even though it was obvious Walden would win. In a discussion with a friend about whether we should be active in the party or independent I expressed my opinion that we of progressive inclinations need to take two approaches. Some of us should be independent so we can speak with a candor that party members wouldn't tolerate but we feel they need to hear. Others should work within the party to effect change, and the independents should help them when they were in agreement. If I recall correctly, I made a similar point in an earlier thread on this site.

On the other hand, perhaps the problem is that people don't like my candor. I'm not alone in this way of expressing opinion as this article by Jim Hightower and others by progressive commentators make clear.

And there is this from Kos

Chris: I don't think we are as far apart as the above might suggest. One of the points I'm trying to make is that there are advantages to being independent but that doesn't mean that people aligned with a party are automatically wrong. Please note my point above where I suggested what we need from the progressive camp are people to work within the party and others to work outside as independents. Personally, I would like to see about 15-20 percent of voters registered as Democrats and a similar amount registered as Republicans with the rest as independents. In this arrangement, perhaps the party leaders might pay more attention to the people; although, I wouldn't bet on it.

Miles, thanks for the link. I'll be reading up on that over the next few days. Your means of debate is at the very least what I'd call civil, and I would like to heavily consider the link you provided.

For now: My point about your point about the 19-yr-olds is that exit polls have always had room for error, and that the sample size mitigates some of that. Hopefully, proper training does, too. I would imagine (without having a shred of data to back it up) that exit pollsters are college kids and activists more than they are tweakers and disinterested youths. In spite of the human factor, exit polls have served us well.

Regarding the randomnity: I agree that some people will lie (don't need any proof to believe something with such a high degree of face validity), and that one group of people might be more inclined to pass on questions than another. Again, exit polls have served us well in spite of that. Though I don't imagine you (or I) can find solid data on which direction those factors lean, I imagine that they're reasonably well-known by polling companies, and factored in if they're significant.

I'm still waiting for an answer from you (not that you're obligated to provide one) as to why you think Carter would bother to exit poll in Venezuela during a Chavez referendum if exit polls are worth as little as you suggest.

Lastly, you wrote: "What is absurd about this entire discussion, however, is the notion that we should somehow trust the POLLSTERS more than we trust our COUNTED VOTES. We of course have to be vigilant for vote and election fraud, but if the only evidence you have is that the polls didn't get it right, then you're standing on pretty thin ice."

I find it to be absurd that you would suggest we trust COUNTED VOTES more than we trust POLLSTERS. Actually, I don't think you did suggest that, because you yourself said that we have to be vigilant. I sure didn't say we should trust POLLSTERS more than COUNTED VOTES. It's situational. Clearly, if we have full transparency of the vote counting process, and have no reason to suspect foul play, we trust the votes. If we don't have transparency, and we believe that the political system is corrupt, we give greatly increased weight to the polls--especially when "independent". And, when there's a hand count vs e-count discrepancy in conjunction with a broken system and proof of recent big cheating (a la 2000 in Florida), we trust the pollsters even more, and want an investigation to insure the integrity of the process. As an aside, even when we do have transparency, we still want exit polls, because a properly performed one is a safeguard against corruption.

If you'll read my posts above, you won't catch me saying "there's for sure cheating here" but you will catch me saying "this smells funny and America deserves to have the matter looked in to". Frankly, I'm a bit peeved that America doesn't have greater transparency in the voting process. If our politicians had done their job to ensure transparency and integrity, you and I wouldn't even be having this conversation, and there wouldn't be a large number of Americans questioning the NH results.

Chris Lowe,

Here is Dennis Kucinich speaking on single-payer healthcare. Would you please point out where he lacks coherence?

Dennis Kucinich Tackles Health Care

Miles, I've had a chance to look over the link you provided. And some of the links that link provided. Not compelling for me.

Let me first start with your comment: Note that in just one example, the exit polls in the 2000 election were wrong in five states by anywhere from 7-16 points(!). Overall in 2000, the exit polls were right in only 19 states -- they overstated Gore's support in 22 states and Bush's support in 9 states.

Of course, we have reason to believe that the exit polls got it right in Florida in 2000. Are we to believe that that was the only state where there was heavy cheating going on? By what magnitude does Gore's overstatement in 22 states outshine or "undershine" Bush's overstatement? And since Florida was a cheaters' state, might that be 21 to 10, etc? Assuming a "properly done" exit poll, and a tendency for polls to skew towards Democrats, why is one state going to swing +10% for the Democrat while another might swing +10% for a Republican. Are respondents really "20% different" between states? Is exit polling methodology that far off?

Another problem I have with the link you cited, is that it treats Mitofsky as a credible polling organization. How so? Exit polls are not supposed to be adjusted to match the results, and that is exactly what Mitofsky did (at least in 2004), but what Zogby would not--which is perhaps why Zogby wasn't used in 2004... At any rate, I'm really curious why you'd provide me with a link to an article that draws so heavily upon a company that is (by changing their numbers) helping the fox to guard the hen house.

This same link you gave me suggests that, when Bush ends up 16% ahead of exit polls, that the exit poll is to blame, and that there isn't anything suspicious about it. I don't know about you, but I think that's really serious head-up-the-ass territory.

The same link you provided also seeks to legitimize the 2000 elections. I could go on and on about the problems with that article, but why not stop now? It looks to me as though the person who wrote that article was willing to accept "the experts" at face value.

Here's a link for you... http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATvotefraud2004.htm

They have an axe to grind, for sure (as did your link), but at least they use sources such as UC Berkeley and U of Pennsylvania. I've seen articles "debunking" the Berkeley paper and they weren't too credible.

Further, if after that, you still don't believe we have a big electoral problem in America, try reading this one:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00165.htm

It explains election 2004 from a way that I hadn't seen until reading.

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