Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Hillary Clinton, Under The Radar

Almost every poll was wrong. Barack Obama was supposed to walk away with the New Hampshire primary. Hillary Clinton won it.

(Disclaimer - Now that Joseph Biden has pulled out of the race, if I had to vote for a Democrat, and I'm talking with a gun to my head, I'd go for Obama.)

I've only seen the polls this screwy in one other state: Louisiana.

Arch-racist and former Klan leader David Duke ran for several Louisiana ofices in the early 1990's. He was, and is, crazier than a rodeo goat. The polling was always off when Duke was in a race - the general theory being that people were ashamed to admit Duke support to a pollster. Therefore Duke always did better in the elections than anticipated.

Duke sometimes said that his support flew under the radar (i.e. couldn't be tracked).

The collected wisdom on yesterday's polling debacle is that Obama's numbers were accurate, and with a very slight surge. But Hillary had an even bigger surge among the undecideds.

I don't buy it.

What does this have to do with David Duke?

Is it possible that the support was always there for Hillary Clinton, but among people whose Political Correctness levels won't allow them to admit they don't support an African-American candidate? Not even in an exit poll, much less in a pre-election survey?

I'm not trying to imply that any of Clinton's supporters are racist. But I do believe that the polling vs. the election results prove that a lot of Clinton supporters don't want to be perceived as racist either.

Political Correctness - 1
Truth - O

2 comments:

Jay@Soob said...

Got a good chuckle out that "rodeo goat" bit. I'll have to remember that one.

As far as Hill taking New Hampshire (a shock to me) let's not forget her "emotional" episode on Monday.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Yeah, I've been reading a lot of British Libertarian bloggers lately.
They have this "keep a stiff upper lip approach to things, and they're horrified by the Oprahzation of our society, where we visibly let things get to us, and therefore we're more genuine. Can you believe someone like that is possibly going to be trusted with the keys to the freakin' nukes? Gag me.
Am in Canada. Their talk radio people are equally aghast, but much more polite about it....