Over at Cogitamus, Nick Beaudrot has produced a pretty detailed map of the New Hampshire vote, and cross-checked it with the exit polls. Picking through the data, he concludes that, "my read of the situation is that Obama formed the 'Bill Bradley Plus Coalition': wealthy liberals, young voters, people of color, and as many middle class ($50,000-$100,000) voters as you can get. He came up a little bit short, primarily among working-class and middle-class urban voters, and didn't have enough people of color in New Hampshire to give him one last little boost." That seems fair. After Iowa, a friend was telling me that for all the talk of Obama being the "wine track" candidate, that proved untrue. But in New Hampshire, it was Hillary who won downscale voters, and Obama only began winning income groups above $50,000. Though it's also worth saying that in a three percent win, the margin of difference in most of these demos was relatively small, and probably shouldn't force too much speculation. At the end of the day, Granite Staters simply went with Clinton. It's testament to the power of the expectations game that the outcome that's been likeliest throughout this whole campaign now seems to have been a surprise.
