With 26 percent of precincts reporting at this point, the lead of Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama is holding and has even expanded to about a 5 percent gap.
What trend there is isn’t looking good for Barack Obama. His aides have got to be starting to get worried. Unless there’s a strong skew in the first 25 percent reporting precincts, they’re in trouble.
Why the strong disparity between the polls and the returns so far? One possibility: Turnout. Another possibility: Independents who don’t want Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee.
or at least, independants who want mccain more than they want barack.
or even independants who thought barack had it in the bag due to the size of his pre-polling, and so voted for mccain to further stymie huck & mitt.
See, it’s stuff like that that just makes me think that New Hampshire is really not much of a good indication of the strength of the candidates after all.
Some of the precincts still out are in college areas, so maybe the 42% lead Zogby showed today will still materialize–oops, Obama and Edwards both telephoned Clinton with congratulations. What does that mean? Is NH winner take all?
and for Jim who thinks the difference between Edwards and Obama is class warfare, here is Obama’s speech tonight:
“If we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that’s stood in our way and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there’s no problem we can’t solve — no destiny we cannot fulfill,”
I’m not that surprised. When I was in Portsmouth last weekend, Hillary had already been there twice that day and her placards were in every snowbank.She was ahead of me in Manchester too. Her signs were in yards, a sign of personal involvement by the landowner. Kucinich signs, in comparison, were on utility poles. Republicans don’t allow signs that much–the country club had none–but there were a lot in the snowbanks on major in intersections. Obama did have some signs, large ones too and at homes, but Hillary definitely had him outclassed in the sign warfare.
The local women also seem to be incredibly energized by Clinton campaign, people were wearing buttons, and it was automatically assumed I was for Clinton by dint of being female. Oh, the peer pressure I suffered!
I’ve noticed (on the CNN website) that even though Clinton won the popular vote in NH, she received only 11 delegates while Obama got 12 (Edwards received 4). So, who really won the state? It’s the delegates that really matter, not the popular vote.
When you add in all of the superdelegates that the candidates have already amassed (which are 20% of the total number), I see that Clinton has 183, Obama has 78, Edwards has 52.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#D
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney leads the pack with 30 delegates. Huckabee is in second with 21, and McCain is in third with 10. Ron Paul is down near the bottom of the list with 2.
what are superdelegates and why does HC have so many?