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When the polls were way off in NH, everyone (even you, Mick) freaked out. Now, in some ways this result is less confusing because they predicted the *right* result (Obama by a large margin) but they surely didn't call the proportions very well. I haven't seen any SC polls where Obama got more than 45% support and there were a few major ones where he was below 40. Clinton was in the mid/upper 20's (not counting outliers (I don't know what ARG is smoking)) and Edwards was in the high teens.
Hillary and Eds finished below their poll numbers, but Obama not only clobbered his, he must have vacuumed up ALL of the undecided voters to make his vote totals. That would seem to show a huge amount of last minute momentum for Obama, and complete domination of the tactical skirmish there in the last week.
I bet that the Obama camp is praying that Clinton leaves Bill in the field.
And then there's that "10% support from white voters" which was completely blown away. I haven't been able to run down the source of that, so I don't know whether this was just undecideds breaking his way or a literal shift in support.
Or is it one of those nifty polling phenomena? Obama won the white younger voters with an outright majority according to CNN. Could it be that phone polls - automated or live - just can't reach anyone under thirty? There's the cell phone phenomenon, but beyond that a lot of people in that age group I know will simply hang up on any phone call that isn't personal or real business. (And if the caller tries to mislead them into thinking it is real business, they'll often punctuate slamming down the phone with some choice profanity.) These are the same people who keep trying to get me to donate to the Obama campaign. Their parents (and especially their grandparents) are too polite to hang up on a live caller. Measuring these kids is going to be critical to polling accuracy... and I bet that they just won't be able to do it right.