A Great Night for Hillary, a Crappy Night for Pollsters

Nashua, New Hampshire -- The results from New Hampshire represent a crushing setback. Not for Barack Obama -- after all, only three weeks ago he was 12 points behind.

No, the biggest losers of the night were the pollsters, who will now have to down a heaping helping of humble pie. Like Lucy Ricardo, they have a lot of 'splainin' to do. That includes CNN, which over the weekend had Obama up 9 points and USA Today/Gallup, which had him up by 13.

This was obviously a great night for Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Bill. But also a very good night for the democratic process (record turnout), and for the long-term prospects of Barack Obama.

The voters clearly want the nominee they pick to have fought for it. They don't want a coronation. And now Obama has a chance to prove to the skeptics his mettle under fire.

And were it not for the over-inflated expectations puffed up by the pollsters, Obama coming within two points of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, which has long been Clinton country -- with a superb organization and the support of the state's Democratic establishment -- would have been seen as a great showing.

But none of the endemic New Hampshire Clinton advantages would have delivered victory were it not for Hillary -- either through desperation or exhaustion -- finally letting down her guard and showing her human side. Or as she put it, "I found my own voice." She got angry in the debate; she got emotional on the stump. Indeed, her victory in New Hampshire was a resounding repudiation of the Mark Penn plan to keep her in a bubble, allow no questions in the last few days of Iowa, and act as if her nomination were inevitable.

"Something is happening in America," Obama said during his concession speech, citing the extraordinary turnout and the country's longing for change.

As an African American Obama supporter said to me tonight, "It's always harder than we think. It's always a struggle. But we shall prevail."

He was referring to the black experience in America. But he might as well have been speaking about any real progress that's been made in this country -- from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Clean Air and Water Acts.

And it's a fitting rallying cry for anyone looking for real change through the '08 race.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[Dunollieman]

Arianna, I,m afraid that your coronation of Obama is going to have to wait a while because America does NOT want a black president. That,s why the polls were wrong it might be p.c. to say you,d vote for a black man but deep down you know in your heart that you just can,t do it.Besides the fact that he,s relatively inexperienced with a message more like pie in the sky than of hope.So keep rooting for this lightweight all you want it,s not going to happen.

[EasyWriter07]

As a communications consultant, I've watched with strong interest as Hillary has struggled to find her voice in this campaign. While she's improved her speaking skills dramatically, she clearly lacks the charisma of Obama and her husband. Critics have long viewed her as too cold, too scripted, too stiff. But perhaps out of desperation, she opened up, and almost overnight, started coming across as more authentic, more believable, and in the process galvanized the women vote. See Hillary and the Power of Communications for my take on it. http://markivey.typepad.com/onthemark/

[Bulbul]

Saw you on CNN, analysis of the polsters was very good !

[pointpetre]

The exit polls were right on in New Hampshire (just as they were right on in the stolen 2004 election.) Properly conducted exit polls are always very close to the actual results of an election - and nobody has ever produced any real evidence that the 2004 exit polling was not properly conducted.

The exit polls also provide our best information about the voters and their issues, judgements.

"http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#val=NHDEM"

[Babaganoush]

Hillary was found to have made false statements.

[Maxbyte]

Arianna: I just posted a response to John Zogby's request for ideas about where polling went wrong. I do not yet know if it will be posted. If it is, it underscores the concerns you expressed tonight on Larry King, and offers some fairly simple solutions.

I agree with one thing Ed Schultz said: 'the polls were correct going into election day, and then people changed their minds [without consulting pollsters]'.

I don't believe anything else Mr. Schultz offered, including that Hillary won because she teared up.

I don't believe the good polling organizations made serious mistakes; but a lot of journalists are now embarrassed because they trusted most of the polls without asking enough questions.

I should add along those lines that HuffPo added to its embarrassment by treating the NH polls as fact rather than estimation. And it had been publishing the most uncomplimentary images of Clinton for a long time.

As you often say, a journalist never wants to make the news. In this instance, HuffPo ended up being THE news not simply because pollsters all failed to deal with the "could change" and "undecided" voters properly, but because HuffPo had aggressively tipped its preference based on estimated results from two of our least important states.

[GeoLee]

The same words "It's always harder than we think" apply to women as well. What happened yesterday was not a race thing, folks. It was WOMEN finding their voice and saying, we have a right to express emotions other than the ones men find acceptable. Hillary Clinton has been dammed if she does and damned if she doesn't and, frankly, we are tired of the double standard not just for her, but for all of us. The reality is that black men who work make more than white and black women who work according to every study. We don't know how this will play out in the months to come, but we do know that now men and those chauvinistic women who live among us who support that you are weak if you choke up (she did nto cry, folks)now know WE have our voice and we proved it in New Hampshire. Now YOU better listen to us and include us and STOP bashing us for being human and labeling us as robots when we keep our vulnerabliolity to ourselves, too, by calling us everything from bitchy to honmosexual to the one who wears the pants in the family and other nasty remarks.

[Tellmethetruth]

The voters didn't do as they were told to my the mainstream media, owned and controlled by billionaires and the most powerful energy companies on the planet. Or worse yet, the women voters acted like they could think for themselves!!!

My oh my!

[StevieRae]

Ariana,
The pollsters blew it by not "interpolating" the 35-40% of polled voters who were undecided or could change their minds. Given this statistically high variance, any analysis of preference data for a particular candidate is pointless. Polls should have been called as too close to call given the high number of undecideds.
For the media supporting a coronation or the burial of Hillary to then use these polling data and not emphasizing up front the undecideds data showed how they're only concerned in reporting a horse race. It's crow eating time and there's plenty to go around.

[YWC]

Obama'08!

[SeattleBoomer]

The "anointed one" met with Murdock last June. She made the deal.
FL and MI you stepped out of line perhaps getting in the way of a super sweep and lost a bunch of power. That will teach you to get your elections in order.
Count the Super Delegates all hail HRC; she is in, like it or not she is the one.
The rest of you need a civics class.

[JAMES GORMAN]

i am horrified that McCain is back--he will win, and he is a Hawk to continue whatBush was. The only mercy is
that McCain has bitterly earned principle about torture,
and after all he did serve his country as a soldier when
needed--and so can get a hearing about more and longer wars: Bush and Cheney are just two old draft
dodgers from Viet Nam days, and have no such moral
authority whatsoever. Both are destined to political
oblivion. James Gorman

[shblogger]

A good night for Hillary, a bad night for Ariana and the rest of Huffpost.

Great spin, Ariana ... Obama really won, and if he didn't, he only lost because Hillary almost cried (it's so unfair!) Blah, blah, blah.

Stop being so obviously biased or at least be honest about it by putting an official endorsement on your site for everyone to see.

[genseric13]

We all know that Arianna, Fox News, talk radio, MSNBC and others tried mightily to swing the election in Obama's favor. The Iowa caucus was basically a tie except for the delegates thrown over to Obama because backstabber Richardson wanted to keep the race going. The media turned the tight Iowa contest into the greatest victory in history for Obama. Sorry guys, the American people didn't fall for it and they didn't like watching HRC get railroaded. I think Obama is starting to be seen as he is, an empty suit with a lot of puffed up rhetoric.

[AnnetteL]

Why do you assume the polls are incorrect and the vote count is correct? We have no way of knowing if the vote count is correct since the votes are counted in secret on easily hacked computers.