Polling the New Hampshire Primaries: What Happened?

There was no shortage of polls going into the New Hampshire primary in 2008 and it looks like we all missed the mark on the Democratic side. This will require a lot of scrutiny in the coming days and weeks, but here are some initial thoughts on what has been happening:

1. According to the exit polls, 18% of the voters said that they made up their minds on primary day. That is just an unprecedented number. I have polled many races, especially close ones, where 4% to 8% have said they finally decided on their vote the day of the election and that can wreak havoc on those of us who are in the business of capturing pre-election movements and trends. But nearly one in five this time?

2. It looks like the always feisty voters in both Iowa and New Hampshire have rejected pre-election coronations. In the case of Iowa, Democratic voters said that Mrs. Clinton is not inevitable, while in New Hampshire they were not ready to endorse the Obama train without checking the engine.

3. The compressed schedule of the two events may have had an impact. Normally the winning candidate gets an initial big bounce out of Iowa, and then plateaus. Then the next primary race begins. With less than five full days, Obama got his bounce in New Hampshire, then the settling down period began on the last day -- under the radar screen.

4. My polling showed Clinton doing well on the late Sunday night and all day Monday -- she was in a 2-point race in that portion of the polling. But since our methods call for a three-day rolling average, we had to legitimately factor the huge Obama numbers on Friday and Saturday -- thus his 12 point average lead. Unfortunately, one day or a day-and-a-half does not make a trend and we ran out of time.

5. Going into the New Hampshire primary, we certainly did see Clinton holding on to a significant lead among women and older voters. But we were focusing on Obama's massive lead among younger and independent voters. We seem to have missed the huge turnout of older women that apparently put Clinton over the top.

6. We expected that Obama would receive the lion's share of independents and drain the Republican primary of these voters. It now appears that, perhaps with a sense that Obama had a lock on the Democratic side, independents felt free to vote on the Republican side and reward their hero, John McCain.

We will pour through the data and try to come up with something more definitive, but those are my early observations. There is much speculation that Senator Clinton's crying incident may have offered voters -- especially women -- a peek at the human side of someone who is often seen as scripted. I think she also scored points during the ABC debate Saturday night when she declared, amid a discussion about the country's desire for a change in direction, that electing a woman would represent a big change in itself. Her numbers did go up in that last 24-hour period.

On the other side, most of us did a whole lot better coming close to the numbers on the Republican side of the aisle. But this is one of those cases that remind us that pre-election polls are guides to voter attitudes and shifts. All things considered in this and other cases, we pollsters still do a creditable job.

Comments

[GrouchoMarxist]

Here's all you need to know about polls:

DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN

[ajax2]

If Zogby is correct that nearly 20% of voters decided on last day, than is pre-polling numbers are virtually worthless.

[PatricefromNH]

As a NH voter with an avid interest in this primary, here's my 2 cents.

No wonder the exit polls were wrong. In our southern NH town, the polling people were gone when we voted at 4:30pm in a packed community center with lots more voters streaming in as we left.

Yep, Hillary touched people with a momentary display of raw emotion most women can relate to, but it was much more than that. She psychologically set the tone for voters to question Obama's and Edward's credentials at the debate.

When people haven't made up their mind right before an election it's due to many reasons, two strong ones are: they don't want to make a mistake and they haven't aligned themselves with a particular position that one of the candidates is passionate about, in other words, they have general concerns. These people are a bit sheep like, they don't want to make a mistake, go off course and fall off the proverbial cliff while being chased by a wolf (anything bad that happens to the country). So, worried about making a mistake, they choose the "experience" line, voting for the candidate they "really know" rather than taking a risk on an unknown leader. This isn't rocket science!

What IS a mystery to me is why John Edwards or Obama didn't rebut Hillary's attacks mocking them with her "35 years experience" by saying "Who am I competing with, you or Bill? If you two are joined at the hip, why isn't he listed on the ballot?"

I liked Bill and thought Hillary an excellent FIRST LADY during those 8 years. I hate the way she takes credit for Bill's presidency like some co-dependent spouse. Let her stand on her recorded merits, not Bill's.

Obama's vision of hope is masterful and inspiring, but my heart and vote is with John Edwards, who so compassionately and tirelessly fights for changing the status quo two Americas, the America of the haves and have nots, into one America, an America with opportunities for all.
Go after her, John.

[tjfxh]

Somewhere along the line the media shifted from reporting the new to making the news. Now the news is influencing the news, just as advertising influences demand and artificially creates it. Maybe media moguls like Murdoch learned something from marketing and advertising?

It's well known that everyone likes to back a winner rather than a loser. If that is the case, then polling certainly has an influence on results.

Perhaps in this case, however, the media was perceived as piling on against Hillary. I even had that impression about the Huffington Post after Iowa, and this perception was mentioned on other blogs, too.

Maybe the voters of New Hampshire were just saying, "Not so fast."

[innerpeace]

Polls are meaningless when a Bush or Clinton is running for something.

[JayEsbe]

Here's a little brain tickler for ya:

When it's KNOWN that 81 percent of New Hampshire vote is counted by Diebold, when it's KNOWN that these machines were never and are not currently certified by the election commission, when it's ALSO KNOWN that Al Gore actually WON in Ohio when the vote was actually counted, when it's ALSO KNOWN that the President of Diebold is ON RECORD saying "we will insure a Bush victory", and when it's KNOWN that the polls matched the results for every other candidate other than Obama/Clinton, and when a guy threatening to unseat the ONLY candidate which polls show the GOP could defeat is polling double digits right up until the polls close, and SUDDENLY, he's gone down to a LOSS, and you LOOK AT THE RESULTS on the hand counted ballots and they STILL SAY HE WON, but the Diebold counted ballots are SEVEN PERCENT OFF AND HAND THE BLOODY VICTORY TO THE GOP'S TARGET OF CHOICE....

WHAT KIND OF A BRAIN DEAD PEOPLE DO NOT ASSUME THE OBVIOUS? !!!!

A GOP operative made use of UNCERTIFIED Diebold machines known vulnerabilities to keep the ONLY defeatable Democratic Candidate viable when she wasn't.

DUH.

The American people should be headed to the primaries with baseball bats and SMASHING THE UNCERTIFID DIEBOLD MACHINES AT FIRST OPPORTUNITY IF THEY EVER WANT THEIR COUNTRY BACK.

[plages]

Find the two men who yelled, and held up the sign which read: "Iron My Shirt!" Then, you'll see who paid them to do this for the womens sympathy vote!

[Beckyjo]

I wish I could believe that there was no racist voting in NH, but I don't. I believe that all over this country people will deny this, but the voting shows it. Most people, when asked, will say they are not racist..th­ey would be so ashamed to admit it, and they are vehement in their denial. However, voting is almost like a confessional in that no one knows what you do. I am white, and live in Kentucky. I know people who would not vote for a black. Some will just flat out tell you and some will show by snide remarks that they are not about to vote for a black. This is Kentucky..­.supposedl­y neutral during the Civil War. Don't try to tell me this attitude is not worse the further south you go. It is shameful to realize there are still lots of people filled with hate and discrimination, and apparently this attitude prevails all over the nation.

[sofia]

With all due respect, Mr. Zogby, you do not do such a great job. Why haven't pollsters asked the real burning issue of our times, and that is the IMPEACHMENT question. You are all in cohoots with each other. You are not doing a service to any of the people with all these idiotic polls.

[brisa]

Hate to be the skunk at the garden party but...quot­ing Nancy Tobi of the Democracy for New Hampshire website, "81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots."

These are the same machines that were tested in the HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy" in which a computer programmer was able to alter vote totals by introducing computer code through the memory cards. Using an optical scanning machine from a county in Florida, they demonstrated how these machines first attempt to read instructions from the memory card before accepting any votes. The audit log can then be wiped clean to remove any evidence of tampering.

Has this obvious security flaw been changed? There is no way of knowing as the source code is proprietary and not reviewable by anyone outside of the manufacturer.

How can anyone have confidence that the total reported actually represent the votes cast? No random audits are done to verify them. Even when recounts are done, as in the Ohio 2004 presidential election, hanky panky has been practiced as revealed by the recent conviction of two election workers who rigged the recount.

And if the vote totals were accurate in '04...why cheat on the recount?

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4266

[Fernando]

A disturbing possibility worth exploring is race. Harold Ford and David Dinkins (and a long etc.) consistently under-performed their poll numbers because more people were willing to say to someone on the phone they'd vote for them than those who actually did it.

I really hope that is not the case, but you can't rule it out either.

[MrMurder]

Thus Zogby explains the fact that Hillary and Obama's numbers in flux at every poll listing and Edwards stayed at seventeen percent with no statistical variation.

Or not.

[speakingtruth2power]

Polls have little importance and are overdone.

Debates are shallow and are more Idol contests

than in depth looks at who the candidates are.

However, as long as we are helped by the MSM to

overlook electronic voting machines, we're screwed.


ST2P

[mostlybluedot]

Mr. Zogby,
My unscientific gut feel is your no 6 is on the money. The independents wanted one of the republicans to win (McCain likley) and opted out of the dem vote. Aside from that I detected an almost gleeful aire about so many of the pundits at the idea Clinton would lose and maybe even drop out. Like "iron my shirt" that is not good sportsmanship and the voters rewared them for it. So much nonsense running around about how Obama is the change agent. His health care plan is most certainly not.

[Bocababs]

The polling suggested the intense movement for Obama, and even I got caught up in the moment. What this piece of Americana told me last night, is that if Hillary and McCain are the Nominees, and given the fact most Independents or Republican men will NOT vote for her, it will be McCain the same way Bush won in 2004.