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Emily Thorson writes:
The TV coverage I've been watching has implied that New Hampshire is a crazy comeback surprise and Iowa is somehow the "real" result. I think they're wrong. Iowa is the anomaly, because of the bizarre public forum that is the Iowa caucus. You know why Hillary does worse in a caucus? Because women who are leaning Hillary go to the caucus with their husbands, and he says "Let's go for Obama" or "Let's go for Edwards" and she says "Well, all right then" because she doesn't want to spend the next hour sitting alone in the Hillary group. I've sat through a caucus. This is how it works.That makes sense, but Hillary Clinton was trailing in the pre-Iowa polls, too, and those are conducted individually, over the phone. So I don't know that the Caucus effect is really causal here. I think it's possible that, much as the surveys suggested, Hillary was simply somewhat less popular in Iowa than in New Hampshire. And that Barack Obama had a somewhat better field organization in Iowa than he did in New Hampshire. And so he won Iowa, and she won New Hampshire.It's worth noting that the polls showed an average 8.3 percent advantage for Obama in NH and that certainly didn't materialize, but it also appears to be the case that a large percentage of voters decided in the final 24 hours. And a huge number of those voters were women. The final 24 hours, of course, were dominated by her choking up over the state of the country, and all sorts of male pundits lambasting her for it. It's impossible to say whether there's a connection or not, but it seems possible. Additionally, my hunch is that Clinton is better suited for late deciders. Supporting Obama is a gut decision: It's about inspiration, and belief, and even a sort of faith in a relatively untested politicians unique talents. My hunch is that process, if it happens, happens earlier on. Clinton, by contrast, is steady leadership in troubled times. She's Ready on Day One. She's a safe choice. And so voters deciding towards the end chose her. I think the major lesson of her win is that you can't simply extrapolate Iowa's preferences out to the rest of the nation. In Iowa, change, and the candidate associated with it, won the day. In New Hampshire, experience, and evident understanding of government, won out.
