Unspun

One of Unspun’s friends in the US sent this. It is a pretty good analysis of why Hilary Clinton won New Hampshire over Barack Obama by Peter D. Hart of Hart Research Associates, a public opinion research firm.

 New Hampshire was the shock heard around the political world.

Today, I have been asked two questions.  One is how could it happen and the polls be so, so wrong?  The other is what does it mean from here?

My short answer to each of these is as follows.  The polls were wrong for the same reason they were wrong some sixty years ago when they failed to catch the surge for Harry S. Truman against Thomas Dewey.  How could that be?

Simply put, one needs to understand that the campaign in New Hampshire was five days in length.  The polling companies polled for a total of three of those days.  In their mind, they said, we polled up to the end.  The reality is that they only polled for 60% of that campaign.

That is equivalent to stopping the polling in the fall election sometime before October 15th.  For New Hampshire, the last 24 hours were the critical ones in the decision making process.

When Hillary Clinton “misted up,” this was not some isolated event that was seen by a few people in a diner, but it was equivalent to the Howard Dean Scream of 2004 in Iowa—it was replayed 10,000 times and it moved 10,000 women.  The key to making sense of what happened in New Hampshire is that the “mist up” was human and the emphasis of her remark was about why she was in the election and the fights she wanted to make.  It was personal, it was from the gut, and it was about the voters and not about herself or her tactics.

Likewise, when John Edwards aligned himself with Barack Obama in the Saturday night debate, it reinforced a sense of two men banding together against the female candidate.  These events touched a special nerve and chord—for every woman who has ever earned less than a man in the workplace, who has ever been denied a promotion, or who has failed to receive credit for her work, this struck an important and human note.

Suddenly, Hillary Clinton became a vehicle for their lives, while prior to that moment she was the “Smartest Girl in the Class” who had hardly been “Miss Congeniality.” They listened and they voted.

Why did the Republican race turn out as expected?  Simply put, nothing unusual happened in the last 48 hours to change the original dynamic.

So What Happens Now?

We are about to view the political equivalent of the “Thrilla in Manila.”  I have been saying all along that this is an election in which there are no straightaways but only hairpin curves.

This is an election in which a basic dynamic is starting to emerge.  Hillary Clinton is running as the candidate of experience and expertise.  She will be painting Barack Obama as the candidate who presents a risk and an uncertain choice.  Safety and stability versus uncertainty and the unknown.  Obviously, Senator Clinton will be enlarging her themes to telling her story and beginning to bring in the personal elements of her life’s experiences.  But at the end of the day, she will come back to her original theme and enhance it with some element of the importance of “breaking through the glass ceiling.”

For Barack Obama his objective is to develop a theme that is centered around the insurgent versus the establishment.  He wants this to be about the status quo or the approaches of yesterday versus the challenges of seeing a different tomorrow.

For Barack Obama, the objective is to build on the theme that Bobby Kennedy used in 1968 when he quoted George Bernard Shaw: “Some men see things as they are and say why?  I dream things that never were and say why not?”

For Obama, the visual is to be seen with people and stressing the words of inclusion and openness.  He wins by painting a vision of an appealing new and better way of governing that voters could not envision Hillary Clinton leading.  She wins by painting a world and a set of challenges that voters would not feel comfortable with Barack Obama leading.

So if this is the situation, who is going to win?  I do not know, but I am enjoying this ringside seat, and I am certain this is an election campaign that will be long remembered.  We will be breaking a barrier not only with the Democratic nominee, but with the next President.

One key point to understand about the Democratic Primary voters is that Obama supporters like Clinton and Clinton supporters like Obama.  This is not like the old internecine warfare where the Kennedy camp could not stand the Carter camp. This means that voters announcing their support for Clinton one day can be easily converted to Obama, and vice versa.

In light of these events I have appended the analysis of a focus group we did about a month ago that underscores why this race is far from over and why the hurdles each candidate needs to clear are formidable.  In the near future, I will discuss the Republican situation.  For now, it is sufficient to say that the enthusiasm and commitment of their voters pales in comparison to the Democrats and the field has yet to be truly winnowed down.

Peter D. Hart