New Hampshire: Racist, Sexist Cheaters

Let me first start by saying that I am “slightly” bias towards New Hampshire. It has been my home, off and on, for over 30 years. Each region of the country likes to boost about their brand of hospitality and talk about the unique attributes of the people that live there, and New Hampshire is no exception.

New Hampshirians are fiercely independent and tend to be frugal to a fault (and I don’t just mean about money). Town hall meetings often require a call to the police, and all the worlds problems are solved every morning at anyone of our local coffee shops. Our Yankee independence permeates every part of our lives.

New Hampshire citizens are extremely proud of their place in American history. New Hampshire was the first colony to declare its independence from Great Britain and to establish its own government (Jan., 1776). New Hampshire legislators were the first to vote on the Declaration of Independence. New Hampshire became the ninth and last necessary state to ratify the new Constitution of the United States in 1788. The first colonist to commit an armed insurrection against the tyranny of the British was in New Hampshire. The first war ship commissioned for the new US Navy was built in New Hampshire. The Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War, an event that also helped President Theodore Roosevelt win the Noble Peace Prize, was negotiated and signed in New Hampshire.

The citizens of New Hampshire have always been proud of their role in national politics. The first toll on the Road to the White House passes through New Hampshire, and has been for over 80-years. So you can only imagine my surprise when I read and heard news reports, as well as bloggers commenting, on the results of the 2008 New Hampshire Primary. By most accounts the citizens of New Hampshire are either racist or cheaters:

Racism:

Foreign News Reports: Will Only Vote for Whitey

Blog Critic: The Ugly American Truth

Sexism Vs. Racism: Which is it?



Cheating/Voter Fraud:

The Internet is filled with bloggers throwing out allegations of fraud and cheating during the NH Primary. Everything from the “old Diebold” voting machine garbage, to outright ballot destruction, is being bandied about like a new martini recipe or suggested, alternate endings to the Matrix.

Doubts About Fraud
Activist Seek Another Cause to Right

So how did the results of the New Hampshire Primary get us to this point? What we are really seeing is a combination of “race baiting (Race Baiting Predicted) from “activist groups (and dare I say, some politicians),” and CYA (Cover Your Arass) on the part of the pollsters. What is lost in all of this are the facts that in the mist of a record voter turnout (which includes an electoral population of 47% undecided), Barrack Obama received over a 100,000 votes in a State with slightly over a million citizens. Obama lost to Clinton by roughly 3% (a virtual statistical tie), and walked out of New Hampshire with an equal number of delegates (nine each).

We should be mindful that polls reflect public sentiment only at the time they're taken; they aren't predictions of a vote, even a few days later. Polls on different dates can yield many different results. It is important to remember that the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day. "It's absolutely a cautionary tale to both the people who do polls and the people who read polls," said Richard Morin, a public-opinion expert at the Pew Research Center. "Pre-primary polling is fraught with dangers. That is particularly the case in New Hampshire, which I have called the graveyard of political pollsters."

It is clear that the timing of the polls missed a late surge of support for Clinton, particularly among women (Hills Angels), influenced by a debate Saturday night, Sunday talk shows, round-the-clock campaigning, and lets not forget that emotional response from Clinton on Monday before the primary to the stress of the campaign:

Andy Smith, a pollster for the University of New Hampshire, noted that previous pre-election polls in New Hampshire have gotten the margins wrong in the past, underestimating, for example, McCain's 18-point defeat over George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP primary. Some pollsters said the record-shattering turnout may have produced a different electorate than the one envisioned in their “models (created by humans)” designed to predict who will vote. Some pointed to the surveys as voters left the polls showing that 17 percent made up their minds on primary day, which was bound to have confounded the pre-election surveys.

The Del Ali's Research 2000 poll turned out to be the most accurate overall in the surveys for the Concord Monitor, correctly predicting McCain's nearly 6-point victory and concluding that Obama was ahead of Clinton by just 1 point — with a 5-point margin of error. "There will be a lot of claims about what happened, about respondents who reputedly lied, about alleged difficulties polling in biracial contests," Gary Langer, the polling director for ABC News stated. "That may be so. It also may be a smoke screen, a convenient foil for pollsters who'd rather fault their respondents than own up to other possibilities — such as their own failings in sampling and 'likely voter' modeling."

Pollster Peter Hart stated that: "The problem with the polling performance in New Hampshire is exactly the same as it was some 60 years ago with the “shocking win” election of Harry S. Truman (Remember the famous headline – “Dewey Defeats Truman”). The pollsters concluded their polling before the voters made up their mind for the final time."

Pollsters: Time to Eat Crow

David Moore, a former senior analyst with the Gallup Organization who now is affiliated with the University of New Hampshire observed that – “Some pollsters push voters to pick candidates when they haven't made up their minds so as to arrive at a more complete prediction of the outcome." “The pollsters don't want to say that 47 percent are undecided, and neither does the news media," said Moore, the author of "The Opinion Makers," a forthcoming book on polling.

The reality is that the pollsters got it wrong because to they forgot one, tiny little detail…the human element. As for the bloggers who live in a world controlled by conspiracies (which happens to exist only in the basement of their parents home)……..your mom is calling. Your grilled cheese sandwich is ready!

For those who would make irresponsible and insulting remarks against an entire State, I feel sorry for you. You reveal yourselves to be either idiots or liars, or both.