Huffpo's Nico Pitney: Florida Results Show Late Momentum for Obama

[flpoljunkie]

Nico Pitney

Florida Results Show Late Momentum For Obama

Hillary Clinton parachuted into Florida on Tuesday to celebrate a double-digit victory in the state's uncontested presidential primary.

The election was mostly meaningless -- Florida's delegates have been stripped and none of the Democratic candidates campaigned there -- but Clinton's "beauty contest" victory rally was covered by all the cable news networks, and she's sure to receive more positive press heading into the all-important February 5 super-primary.

Yet a closer look at the exit surveys shows some notably positive trends for Clinton's chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama.

Despite losing the state overall by 17 points, Obama actually won more support than Clinton from voters who made up their minds in the last three days (46 percent to 38 percent), in the last week (39-31) and in the last month (47-40).

Clinton did defeat Obama among Floridians who decided on a candidate on the day of the primary. But overwhelmingly, Clinton's support came from those who made up their minds over a month ago (63 percent to 27 percent), and from early voters who used absentee ballots (50-31). Floridians began receiving absentee ballots in late December.

According to the exit polls, those early deciders and early voters made up fully 59 percent of Florida's Democratic electorate.

The results seem to indicate that Obama picked up significant momentum in Florida following his victories in Iowa and South Carolina, as well as his high-profile endorsements (49 percent of Florida voters said Ted Kennedy's support was important to their decision).

Link

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. interesting

[islandmkl]

2. All this after-the-fact analysis

mainly keeps pollsters/statisticians employed. Does anyone have the formula for getting people to make up their minds 'on the day of the vote' as opposed to 8 months earlier. Maybe the focus should be on presenting the facts, discussing the problems and solutions, and offering some true leadership. Then the only analysis needed would be the simple math of 'more votes beats less votes'. Of course, that is in principle only. Math doesn't figure in stealing votes, miscounting, outright fraud, etc. Like the boys in Vegas used to say: "I want first count, you can have last count."

[Ganja Ninja]

3. I voted Obama yesterday.

The reason I did was because Hillary is trying to change the rules after the fact and have the Florida delegates counted.

[Uben]

4. coincidence?

(49 percent of Florida voters said Ted Kennedy's support was important to their decision).



Percentage of Fla. voters for Clinton = 49%

Things that make you want to go Hmmmmmmmmm?