Early Returns -- Hillary Ahead By A Hair; McCain Wins

Comments (22)

kozmik wrote on January 8, 2008 8:21 PM:

I kind of suspected, and posted here, that ARG and Zogby were inflating Obama's numbers in NH, after over predicting Hillary in Iowa.

I'll be surprised by any resounding victory Obama gets while Edwards is still in, as they're splitting the "change" vote, and Hillary and Bill always have things up their sleeve, like her last minute sob routine and the smear mailer.

Rove tactics, they do work, to a point.

But if Hillary wins this, or even comes in second, then Edwards should drop out and throw his votes to Obama. As this point he's not winning, and he's just enabling Hillary to stay competitive with 1/3 the vote.

southpaw wrote on January 8, 2008 8:23 PM:

Thanks Mr. Sargent. Veddy, veddy interesting...

Qtip wrote on January 8, 2008 8:23 PM:

Crap... I'd hate if she did it. But she's doing it. It's like a cockroach infestation.

Anonymous wrote on January 8, 2008 8:25 PM:

Absolutely meaningless

Seth H. wrote on January 8, 2008 8:26 PM:

My assumption is that Obama is going to do better in the larger urban areas and more poorly in the smaller precincts. The larger precincts, for obvious reasons, take longer to report, so don't be surprised to see him take a lead shortly.

Michael wrote on January 8, 2008 8:27 PM:

ward-by-ward voting:

link

Hillary's lead comes from 3 small towns (3500 voters or fewer) and Manchester Wards (her stronghold in the state)

Those numbers will prob. change as more urban areas start to report

brm wrote on January 8, 2008 8:29 PM:

Crying works

hello_world wrote on January 8, 2008 8:30 PM:

13% reporting right now, and Clinton up by 2,000 votes. It's very early, but I'm surprised by how strong she's looking. I figured that a 10+ point blowout was a bit much, but if Clinton comes back to win this after everything, it's a huge setback for Obama.

Michael wrote on January 8, 2008 8:31 PM:

Clinton 4,595, Obama 3,122 in 6 of 12 Manchester wards

This is where her lead is coming from right now

Manchester still has significant pockets of working-class voters, and is a good bellwether for the Hillary Clinton blue-collar vote. If Clinton carries Manchester by a wide margin, expect the results to be closer than expected. If Obama keeps close in Manchester, expect him to win comfortably statewide.

linky

Anonymous wrote on January 8, 2008 8:31 PM:

Is the fix already in?

arcane wrote on January 8, 2008 8:33 PM:

how is it possible to project the gop race with only 15 percent of the precincts?

Somebody school me, I'm ignorant about this. Aren't 85% of the votes still out there?

Michael wrote on January 8, 2008 8:33 PM:

There's no real reason to expect the last 6 Manchester Wards to look identical to the first 6, but if they do, that's on a 4,000 vote advantage for Hillary, or about 1.3-1.6 % advantage in the state overall. That's probably not enough for her when all the more heavily liberal areas start reporting

Anonymous wrote on January 8, 2008 8:35 PM:

16% in.
40% Clinton - 17713
36% Obama - 15715
still 2000 votes
McCain took a lot of independents and Edwards is siphoning the change vote and helping Hilary. It's going to be close.

southpaw wrote on January 8, 2008 8:35 PM:

Michael-

Where is Nashua on the "liberal" (or not) continuum?

hello_world wrote on January 8, 2008 8:36 PM:

Thanks for the links Michael. Very informative.

Michael wrote on January 8, 2008 8:38 PM:

southpaw, sorry, don't know about Nashua...

Seth H. wrote on January 8, 2008 8:41 PM:

The networks call as soon as they have about a 99.5% statistical probability for a candidate. Their thinking takes into account the current reporting precincts, exit polls, and pretty much all the other data they have available and they're very rarely wrong (exception of Fox News calling Florida for Bush in 2000).

The Caped Composer wrote on January 8, 2008 8:42 PM:

I would hypothesize that Nashua is fairly liberal now, thanks to the influx of residents who moved there from nearby Massachusetts. It is in the southern part of the state, which has experienced the greatest population growth of incoming younger, more liberal voters.

Steven T Van Haren wrote on January 8, 2008 8:47 PM:

Yes, thank you Michael.

For the room: I've been trying to figure out this bit from the NYTimes liveblog:

"They will not be receiving a complete report for one precinct in Chesterfield. The town clerk told our interviewer that so many people were voting that they lost count."

Chesterfield is in the same county as Manchester, Cheshire County. Chesterfield a few less than 4,000 people. Inducing from these numbers and from Michael's Graniteprof link, we might predict that Chesterfield would lean towards Hilary. If one of it's precincts isn't counted, this could be significant, given the numbers are so close right now.

Don't you think?

bridoc wrote on January 8, 2008 8:57 PM:

Yeah...after Manchester finishes coming in the total should only tighten, and hopefully Obama will move ahead. A win here for her wouldn't make any sense at all, from all the polls, including the exit polls, from the independent turnout, nothing indicates she should win...so it ought to change here pretty soon.

And when Edwards comes in a distant 3rd here he needs to hurry up and fall behind Obama. I know he wants to make it to SC, but the polls obviously show he isn't going to do any better there. We can't keep splitting the progressive vote.

savvy wrote on January 8, 2008 9:13 PM:

I agree with you Bridoc. this reporting sounds shady at best. Reminds me of FL and OH for Gore and Kerrey respectively.

c wrote on January 8, 2008 10:49 PM:

She lives, no question about it, and probably had better organization than we credit her for. So we've got a competitive race. On to NV and SC, and super Tue.

I hope it's now clear that mockery isn't a good idea. We need to take her seriously and her supporters seriously and make better arguments.

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