Obama was up double digits in the polls

[jackson_dem]

What happened? This has to be one of the greatest collapses in New Hampshire primary history.

[havocmom]

1. Polls must have a wee bit more 'margin of error' than they let on

[MadBadger]

2. The polls were just wrong.

[HeraldSquare212]

3. I guess they modeled his voters wrong

[Occam Bandage]

4. This is an enormous failure of polling.

[99th_Monkey]

More likely an enormous failure of electronic voting machines w/ no paper trail

or more accurately, our reliance on them to tally "results".

[Occam Bandage]

9. No proof of that yet.

[99th_Monkey]

28. Only wild deviations in ONLY Obama & Clinton numbers, but not in any other races

[kurth]

5. The sample was from younger voters

Very misleading polling snapshot.

[depakid]

12. How in the world do you figure that?

Much of whatever systematic bias in the sampling would have worked to exclude younger voters.

Assuming of course that the outfits commissioning or touting the polls actually were concerned with a representative sample -or a valid and predictive set of questions & responses.

[depakid]

6. "What happened?"

Let's hope DU'ers ask themselves that question every time we see a cheap media poll... whether posted here or elsewhere.

[Botany]

7. Not unless they had horrible sampling my guess is:

[K Gardner]

8. All I have to say is Diebold.

[KennedyGuy]

14. was it Diebold in Iowa too?

[elizm]

20. Body counts in Iowa. But nice try. nt

[K Gardner]

22. They didn't use Optical Scanning in Iowa. n/t

[Superman Returns]

10. women

they liked Hillary in the debate, and then they felt sympathy after the media's focus on her emotional moment.

[RoveRage]

17. Sympathy? Yeah, that'll win a general election.

[thoughtcrime1984]

11. Ignore all polls

They seem to be considerably off far too often.

[Botany]

13. Not if they are done right

a 14 point swing in less than 24 hours is outside of the margin of error.

[no name no slogan]

15. DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN

The only poll that means anything is the one on election day.

[bunnies]

16. What happened? Hillary cried.

Hats off to HRC for the brilliant political maneuver.

[Doofer]

18. Obama was up double digits in the polls

Something doesn't smell right...

[Penndems]

19. Part of the fun and excitement of politics is the unpredictability of the electorate

Polls can be wrong, and people do change their minds right up until they cast their ballots. It's up to the candidates and their campaign teams to make sure votes for their candidates are locked up. Senator Obama won in Iowa; voters in The Granite State preferred Senator Clinton. Who knows? Maybe former Senator Edwards will take South Carolina. All three of these races are very, very fluid.

Every state and territory has its own particular (and sometimes peculiar!) brand of politics.

[NOVA_Dem]

21. My friend from work told me Obama was going to lose NH and here's why...

He came over to my cube the day after the IA caucus to celebrate the good news. He said that he has a lot of family in NH and he says they're not as "progressive" as you think (well, he called them racist mf'ers but I didn't want to say that).

My only thing is that if the polling was more or less accurate for McCain why wasn't it for the Dems?

[K Gardner]

23. Exactly.. what you said last. Smells, doesn't it?

[NOVA_Dem]

26. I think you're going to see a lot people hiding behind the "gender" gap n/t

[jackson_dem]

25. This is what happened to Doug Wilder (the first black gov)

You may be on to something...

[NOVA_Dem]

27. I guess when you're alone in that booth....n/t

[LittleBlue]

24. This shift is unprecedented in modern times

Never has every poll been wrong after declaring a winner outside the margin of error, afaik.

[marlakay]

29. I hope this tells people how fucked up

the polls are...

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

30. What is the amount of shift between the polls and the actual numbers?

I haven't been keeping up with the polls. Is it just one or two polls or an average of most of the polls that showed Obama significantly ahead? Hillary Clinton is three percentage points up now. How much of a percentage shift was there overall if you average all the polls?