Anyone else think that maybe the polling errors last night (when exit polls and some last minute polls showed Obama winning several more states than he did), and the exact same problems in New Hampshire - and with exit polls in the 2004 Bush-Kerry race - which built up waves of optimism then undercut by the results - and so made otherwise fairly predictable and relatively close losses look and feel like crushing defeats - may simply be the product of a rare phenomenon confronting the pollsters: wild enthusiasm for one candidate? The theory that was used to explain 2004 exits - people who voted for Kerry rushed from the voting booth fired up and ready to talk to exit pollsters about their vote, with less enthusiasm from Bush voters leading them to dodge interviews, would pretty neatly explain what we're seeing this cycle with Obama, wouldn't it? (Plus it could answer the question of why every major national poll on the eve of the 2000 election showed Bush winning the popular vote - there's little doubt that his voters were more psyched about their guy than Gore's were.)

So if that's where we are, it may be that the narrative people like Chris Matthews keep trying to foist onto this race every time they get 'evidence' from pollsters just before and just after the votes are cast showing Obama with momentum that will finally KO Hillary, just will never happen this year. People voting sort of dourly will continue to cast 'grown up' or even somewhat cynical votes for Hillary, and not want to talk about the whole thing all that much, and people voting for Obama will continue to be inspired and more willing to answer pollsters' calls before they vote and fill out their forms after they vote. Is it really surprising that people voting to transcend the racial divisions of America are more revved up than those voting for incremental improvements, like the shorter financial aid forms Hillary promises?

But if we stop expecting that sort of breakthrough for Obama, and accept that his success in this process may be to get through the rest of the states in a virtual tie with Hillary, in terms of delegates, rather than routing her into defeat, as Chris Matthews keeps expecting, maybe we'll be better braced for the voting to end in June without a clear winner. Then it will be up to the party to just pick the candidate they decide is best placed to hold the states Kerry won and pick off some of those that went for Bush in 2004.

This Obama voter, yet to cast a primary vote, is not dead! ♫ ♪♪!!!

On the issue of momentum, the Clinton campaign's conclusion finds support in a Gallup poll yesterday: "Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama remain fairly closely matched in national Democratic voters' nomination preferences, although Clinton appears to have stopped Obama's momentum over the past two days. Gallup Poll Daily tracking data from Feb. 2-4 show Clinton with 47% of the top choices of Democratic voters and Obama the preferred nominee of 42%."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/104158/Gallup-Daily-Tracking-Election-2008.aspx

It's not called "spin" for nothing. I prefer creative lying, but it doesn't have the same ring to it.

It was fun last night watching Terry McAwful on MSNBC spinning like a top regarding Hillary's incredible victories. It sort of reminds me when he was DNC chair and he was on all the cable outlets election night 2002 when democrats were routed repeatedly insisting "we're winning!" as house seat by house seat fell to the Republicans. He comes from the "don't believe your lying eyes" school of thought.

ColoradoJones, you stole my thunder. That's a pretty funny arguement when you think about it.

This is a good analysis and must read of the upcoming states.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/road_ahead_tough_for_clinton.html

Hope it plays out that way. Better read then union busting penn's drivel.

Only can the Clintons claim Obama's 20 point up tick as momentum-stopping.

This pattern is going to reinforce The Clintons' bid to seat Florida and Michigan. The only way they can be included fairly is to recontest those states. They moved up because they wanted to matter; they'll matter even more as tiebreakers.

Momentum stopping? Isn't that what New Hampshire was for? How did that work out in SC?

First off, I don't believe a word Mark Penn said about exit polling. I think he made that up. Having said that, HRC's campaign has always been about ascendancy, so holding server like she did in NY, NJ, MA and CA should not be seen as signs of strength, but rather viewed against the backdrop of losing CT, CO, MO, KA, etc, as a sign of struggling. She's sort of in an unenviable position of meeting her campaign's expectations of dominance, which simply won't happen.

Obama's momentum has not stopped but rather these results show it is still growing. He closed the gap in all the states she won, showing he does have the mighty mo on his side. He also won in states that have small black populations, like UT or ID or CT. He is ahead on delegates and I still think he will win the nomination and ultimately the Presidency based on his performance yesterday.

After 2000, I hope to hell that the Democratic party understands that the party basses CANNOT decide the nominee. It would be the ultimate outrage--worse than 2000.

I think the vote in Florida is the best and purest reflection of the American public. The argument that neither candidates campaigned in Florida is utter nonsense. You have to live under a rock in outer space to not know all the issues in this campaign. What Florida’s vote reflect is a pure representative of the people’s voice void of the pressures from the ELITE LIBERAL MEDIA that has worked overtime in all the other campaigns to do the bidding of their affirmative action candidate. Floridians came out in record numbers because they are so engaged and their vote is the best reflection to date of the America people.

Paul-

"Elite Liberal Media."

Who did I hear that from yesterday?! Oh, that's right, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in their screeds against John McCain. HILARIOUS!

I love the premise of you argument. The idea is something like this: Without the media, Americans are free-thinkers. However, obviously, they are not smart enough to see through a media bias. So, essentially, the average American voter is too stupid to think for themselves with a full throat campaign in progress, with media, but is perfectly competent without the media and a full throat campaign.

Sounds like a plausible argument for repealing the freedom of the press.

You are such a tool. Seriously.

Stop his momentum? Are they serious? He won more states with more delegates on a night that two weeks ago she said would wrap it up for her. He's closed the national gap and either double his % in states HRC had a 30 points advantage in or outright won in states that should have been hers by default.

Stopped his momentum?

These Clintons are so full of shit.

Umm...you didn't stop anything, the election was a snapshot of Obama's momentum, and if it had been a week later the results would have been very different. We'll see what tune they are singing after Obama takes the next couple states.

Well they didn't stop me from making yet another $25 donation to his campaign today.

Ignoring the request to submit my comment only once because it's taken twenty minutes, I'd like to say again that these types of comment threads don't do TPM any good. They're the reason I was hesitant to take those two seconds to register when you guys requested it.

I hope Paul and the rest of the media bias trolls know that there are plenty of sites available for them to rant. They don't need to use this one.

How does the Hillary camp know that they have stopped Senator Obama's momentum? What will they say if he wins the majority of the next six contests?. Aren't they being premature in making such a claim. They now have put themselves in the position of having to win the next two or three states, or they will look like they are collapsing, based on their own claims of having stopped Senator Obama.

laurel_nyc writes

Hillary's win despite the daily barrage of negative bias from the media is significant indeed. Barack's numbers would plummet if he had to endure the same amount of negative media coverage. When you think about it though, it's rather obvious - most of the media commentators are wealthy white males...Barack's typical supporters...of course they don't want Hillary to win!

I agree that Obama is popular with the media. But isn't that a good thing? Remember 2000? The media loved Bush then, and it hurt Gore in the election. Now it's 2008, and we're going up against McCain, another media darling. Frankly, I think that we really want someone with the media on his side.

PS I don't that "wealthy white males" are Obama's typical supporters. If most journalists were young, educated, black men, it would be a different story.

Caucuses vs. Primaries

This is bugging the crap out of me: how come whenever the voting is done out in the open, Barack wins (usually by big margins), but when voting is done in secret on hackable voting machines, Clinton usually wins? Call me crazy, but after years of watching how devious Karl and Co. are, and after two presidential elections where elections were suspect, I swear I'm convinced SOMEONE is rigging the democratic race to make sure it drags and drags and drags and drains and bloodies the candidates, when it seems to me that Barack has the big mo. And I don't think the caucus vs. primary issue can be explained by the Bradley Effect (where people will say in public that they're willing to vote for an African American person to try to appear "politically correct", but then when voting in secret, they won't vote for an African American). I'm still convinced there was something fishy that happened in N.H., and I think it was done to stop Obama's huge momentum. Am I the only person that is worried that elections can be rigged as long as we are voting on secretly programmed voting machines?

Again for folk sleeping through the last two months:

All, every, more-than-most DEM Primaries and Caucuses are PROPORTIONAL. Nobody wins a state on the DEM-side . WINNING STATES is FAUX Opinioncast propoganda for folk not quite sufficently 'down from the trees' to grok reality.

The DEM nomination process is about Delegates won and Super Delegates created by elections and the party machine AND after the first or second balloting (depending on the state the person is from), it is about sexual favors and payola and cigars in backrooms.

Democrats say they are smarter, more reasonable and more educated the Republicans but it ain't showing these days. Did Reagan's war against humanities really win by wiping out our collective ability to think?

I'm scared . . . Scared in a way I don't know if I can communicate to anyone else anymore.