Why Hillary Won NH

Despite the fact that every single poll had Barack Obama winning in New Hampshire by a substantial margin, Hillary Clinton appears to have pulled off the upset of the century. This upset is sure to fire up her campaign donors, as she blatantly alluded to in her victory speech and reinvigorate a campaign that many had thought was, at its best, on its last legs. Shocking to say the least. So how exactly did this get done? Well I've got some guesses that are pure speculation.

1. Women - Based on the exit polls it looks like Hillary cruised among women across the board. Obama had actually beaten Hillary pretty handily among women in Iowa but she seemed to have corrected that pretty quickly.
There's also the Gloria Steinem article in the New York Times from yesterday which basically said that if Barack Obama was a woman he would have no chance in this race. Though probably true that a bi-racial female would probably have a hard time winning, one could equally argue that if Hillary was black (or simply biracial) she would have no shot at the White House either. Regardless, I would argue that those that detest Hillary have reasons (primarily) other than her gender for disliking her. But I digress. . .

2. The Bradley Effect

For those unfamiliar, here is a description of the Bradley effect via Wikipedia:

The term Bradley effect or Wilder effect refers to a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voteropinion polls in some political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate.Specifically, there have been instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots.

Obviously it's too early to tell and there's nothing worse than being the black guy that plays the race card. But according to RealClearPolitics.com, which averages all of the polls taken, Obama had on average an 8.3 point lead over Hillary yesterday, with some polls giving him a 13 point edge. Taking the average into account, that means an 11 point turnaround in 1 day. Pretty unlikely given there were no significant changes given since the debate. I'm not saying it, but I'm saying. . .

3. The Media

Did anyone else notice how much the media came together to relish in Hillary's downfall? I'm not her biggest fan and even I felt bad for her. The NY Post and Daily News said she was "So yesterday" and "Finished." There were stories that her campaign was running out of money and that they might "bow out" before she loses too much respect for herself. It was quite excessive at times. Given all of the press coverage maybe the maxim that "bad publicity is better than no publicity" held true. Either that or she brought out the sympathy vote from people who didn't like seeing her get so bullied by the press.

4. The Emotion

Maybe like Hillary said in her victory speech she "found her voice in New Hampshire." People are already calling this moment the "gamechanger", if you will (and I will). Peep it.

Most people's response to the clip is "Wow. Finally some authenticity out of Hillary." Or maybe it ties into the sympathy from the media's onslaught. At any rate, it was replayed, discussed, and became the issue of the day so it certainly could not have hurt.

All of this, of course, is just speculation though.