I think the polls killed Obama more than anything else. You have so many people in that state that had the ability to vote in either party and who had a strong preference in both, and 2 days out you have numerous polls giving a 9 point margin to one of your favorites.

I think quite a few independents that liked both Obama and McCain chose to vote for McCain since Obama was doing so well, and quite a few who liked McCain and Clinton chose to vote Clinton to try to shore her up...

Basically the independents that were polled to be in favor of Obama were more likely to vote in the matchup that was unsure than the one that was way up, and the independents that liked Clinton were more likely to vote to try to shore up her candidacy.

That doesn't discount the success of her staged tears or the fact that the former president has the lack-of-class to go into his own party's primaries and have a week-long mudslinging spree... but I'm sure the movement of the independents was very significant as well.

Assuming the tears were staged and that they contributed to Mrs. Clinton's success, why would staged tears be worse than staged passion?

To my mind, Mr. Obama is mostly staged passion, and the uncritical, self-congratulatory response of his supporters is a real turn off. You'd think he were the Pope or the Beatles.

No one is saying he voted for Mrs. Clinton because she turned on the water works. But there were plenty of voters who supported Mr. Obama because he's "passionate".

Candidates run to get elected. Anything short of murder and mayhem is fair play.

I personally am baffled why someone crying about loosing would make them seem a winner in somebody else's eyes, but you're correct that it's all fair play, even when the former president chooses to go on a mudslinging rampage within his own party (though it certainly feels like the old cigar-smoking back-rooms where the party bosses decide who they want and determine to "take out" everyone who opposes their choice).

My post was asserting that the water works and Bill's bullying were not the predominant factors... I think the polls were.

If I were an independent who liked one of the republicans and Obama, and Obama was up 10 points... I'd vote in the republican race just because it would seem safe that my choice was winning the democratic race.

But it also seems that we want the candidate that can appeal to the people who switch parties back and forth, rather than the candidate that only appeals to the die-hard democrats. So, in this case, if my interpretation is correct (which I obviously believe), the polls caused the more electable candidate to lose this one primary.

It's a bad day for the future of the democrats.

Nice spin, lets see if it holds up in the rest of the primaries.

Your analysis that would-have-been Obama independents voted in the Republican primary instead doesn't jibe with the numbers: over 285,000 votes were cast in the Democratic primary, beating a previous record of 221,000, while the Republican numbers this year were around 230,000, compared with 239,500 voting in the GOP primary in 2000. (Statistics from the Washington Post)
My take from that is that people voted in the primary for the party they expected to vote for in the general election--bad news for the GOP.

Tundrayeti:

I personally am baffled why someone crying about loosing would make them seem a winner in somebody else's eyes....

Since she did not actually cry, it obviously must have been for some other reason.

I have to agree and I was looking for someone from the media to check this out. They totally blew the pre-poll analysis and it would seem that where they blew it was with the independants. You would think that someone could check out the exit polls and see that Ibama didn't get the percent of the independants that he had counted on and McCain got more than the pundits has calculated. Hence, the swing in the final results from the pre-poll predictions.

However, if you are right and they were reacting to the pre-poll analysis and trying to make the vote count more, it doesn't tell us much about their first choice in a race between Obama and McCain, where the fight will be closer for the independants. It probably does indicate greater general electoral support for McCain in a race against Hillary.

28% more people voted in the NH democratic primary than ever before, while in Iowa over 60% more people voted than ever before.

In 2000, an overwhelming majority of the independents voted in the republican primary, since the Gore/Bradley contest had more than a 30% gap and Bradley, while interesting, was a far-left candidate who was less appealing to the party-switching independents. This time around there was supposed to be a LARGE lead for Obama (who is exciting to the independents) and a close race for McCain (who is liked by the independents). Instead, McCain had a complete domination and Obama lost by a slim margin.

The fact that the republicans didn't break their 2000 record is meaningless concerning my assertion, as is the fact that the democrats DID. Enough independents seemed to have switched to vote for McCain instead of Obama in the last minute to give Hillary an edge, and I can't help but believe that the fact that EVERYONE (including myself) assumed Obama was assured had to be a very large factor.

I don't have the numbers but it is my understanding that McCain swepted the independants in in 2000. It would seem that this year he split them with Obama. I believe that tundrayeti's point was that Obama did get alot of support from the independants, just not as much as the pre-poll pundits predicted. And maybe they were reacting to those pundits.

I thought the concensus was that the tears, fake or not (I think not), reached out to one significant group: women. Not all but a significant % of women will be automatically driven to comfort a distraught woman in their social group. Might have been enough to push enough women over from Obama to Hillary.

The flaw I see in this analysis is that Obama did not get fewer votes than predicted by polls, but Clinton got more than predicted. Her votes came from somewhere else, not from Obama's field.

This is a valid counter-point... However, Obama did not get a lower PERCENTAGE of the vote than anticipated, not a lower total vote. The total number of voters was far higher than anticipated. The polling assumed Richardson and Edwards would do better, and there was ~6% undecided... so unless Hillary took 100% of their supporters (a statistically impossible assumption, and unsupported by the polls since Obama won the men by a fairly large margin, and Edwards and Richardson had more men support than women, and the 6% undecided was evenly distributed gender-wise.

So, if the vote bleed from Richardson, Edwards, and the undecideds were split between Obama and Hillary (more likely), then to maintain ~37% of the final vote he would have had to have lost a lot of voters... I think they went to McCain because they were comfortable he would win.

Admittedly this is all conjecture, and it doesn't diminish the effectiveness of crying or mudslinging ex-president/party bosses. :)