With everyone trying to figure out just what the heck happened in New Hampshire, where predictions of huge victories by Barack Obama and John McCain went awry and partially awry, it now appears that a number of factors played into Tuesday night's results.
First, as I mentioned in last night's post, remember that Hillary Clinton like all the other candidates spent a lot of time campaigning in the Granite State last year and led in the polls just about all the way up to Iowa. The pollsters and pundits may have overestimated Obama mania in the days following Iowa, but the fact was that Hillary had worked up a great deal of support already -- especially among women -- and that wasn't going away overnight.
Second, while the candidates had spent a lot of time in-state and had, or had not, built up their support, a sizable portion of the electorate didn't make up their minds until the last couple of days, according to several polling firms. More of those went for Clinton than Obama. Interesting, if true. A phenomenon which could hurt the Illinois senator in the future if people decide they'd rather have the tried-and-true commodity.
Third, all the talk about the independent vote was whether it would go to Obama, hurting John McCain, or to McCain, hurting Obama. It looks like the independent vote ended up being relatively split, hurting both. Obama didn't get enough to hold off Clinton, and McCain didn't get enough to post a smashing victory.
Among all the gnashing of teeth, I really don't think New Hampshire will end up having a significant impact on the race. Clinton's campaign wasn't crushed. Obama, while coming in second, still did quite well to come within two percentage points of someone who'd led the entire race, and Edwards was never highly regarded there.
For the GOP, McCain's victory was not nearly strong enough to help him break out of the pack. Romney has now lost the two state's he spent millions of his own dollars to win, yet he was a strong second each time. Huckabee's 11 percent, as I mentioned last night, is nothing to celebrate but he'd been a non-factor in the state until just last week.
So all the major players are still in. It's going to come down to who has a strong national organization. There's South Carolina and Florida. Nevada for Democrats and Michigan for Republicans. If someone takes two of the three in either party, it could give them an advantage heading into Super Tuesday.
All the first few states have done is confirm the front-runners and weed out some weaklings like senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden. Nothing that wasn't expected.
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Here's something new. A national poll out tonight shows Rudy Giuliani's national support at 9 percent! He's gone for the big-state strategy based around Florida and Super Tuesday, which makes sense at face value. But in virtually ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire, he's taken himself out of the consciousness of voters.
Last night I rated him a winner for getting a bunch of votes in New Hampshire while barely setting foot in the state. Now I'm not so sure.
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I found a list of states voting on Super Tuesday. Here's the ones that should be watched, the ones that will be battlegrounds in November. The candidates who perform well in those places on Feb. 5 will have a leg up on the nomination.
Those states are Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Not tons of delegates among them, but enough to swing a close race. Others will be old standbys like Florida and Ohio.
