With 24 hours to go…

January 7, 2008

The New Hampshire primary, believe it or not, is tomorrow. The polling window between the results of the Iowa caucuses and the voting itself is fairly small, but we’ve seen quite a bit of data over the last couple of days, giving us a sense of what’s likely to happen.

Let’s take a look at the Dems first:

* USA Today/Gallup: Obama 41%, Clinton 28%, Edwards 19%

* Zogby: Obama 39%, Clinton 29%, Edwards 19%

* ARG: Obama 39%, Clinton 28%, Edwards 22%

* CNN/WMUR/UNH: Obama 39%, Clinton 29%, Edwards 16%

* Marist: Obama 36%, Clinton 28%, Edwards 22%

* Rasmussen: Obama 39%, Clinton 27%, Edwards 18%

* Suffolk University: Clinton 35%, Obama 33%, Edwards 14%

Come Wednesday morning, the pollsters at Suffolk University are going to look remarkably good or embarrassingly bad.

And the Republicans:

* USA Today/Gallup: McCain 34%, Romney 30%, Huckabee 13%

* CNN/WMUR/UNH: McCain 32%, Romney 26%, Huckabee 14%

* Marist: McCain 35%, Romney 31%, Huckabee 13%

* Zogby: McCain 34%, Romney 29%, Huckabee 10%

* Rasmussen: McCain 32%, Romney 31%, Huckabee 11%

* ARG: McCain 35%, Romney 27%, Huckabee 12%

* Suffolk University: McCain 30%, Romney 27%, Giuliani 10%

Stay tuned.

One thing that is important to remember about the Republican side (I don’t know if it applies to the Democrats) is that you have to get to 10% to get a delegate (heard it on CSPAN).

I’ll be interested to see if Ron Paul makes the cut. I want him to speak at the Republican’t National Convention.

If Obama’s support does not materialize at the polls, expect Chris Matthews to start screaming about whites lying to the pollsters.

  • I see that Rudy Giuliani broke into the top three in the Suffolk University poll.

    Rudy who? All of the talk on the news and in the blogs for the past week has been about Huckabee, Romney, and McCain. Rudy seems to have fallen completely off the radar. What does a guy have to do to get noticed?

    NINE-ELEVEN! NINE-ELEVEN! NINE-ELEVEN!

  • “Rudy seems to have fallen completely off the radar.”

    Isn’t that because he deliberately skipped Iowa and NH and is relying on expat New Yorkers in Florida?

  • I can’t begin to tell you how many articles I’ve heard/read since Thursday that don’t even mention Edwards. No wonder he’s falling in NH — most people don’t even know he’s still running.

    Stupid media.

  • Poor Rudy.

    It’s pretty amazing to see a once-preemptive frontrunner fall so far so quickly.

    (Snicker.)

    It seems like the more people who become familiar with Obama, Edwards, and Paul, the more votes they get. Guliani seems to have the opposite effect — his weasel-tude shines through, eventually.

  • Hillary is hemmoraging support because she’s got people going negative on the guy(s) selling hope. I guess they had no other play, but this is the year of new hope, not the year of “realistic expectations”. We can finally see the end of Bush and the Republicans are scared shitless. Telling me to keep my hope in check isn’t going to get my vote, unless you can convince me that Obama is unelectable.

    Like I said, IMHO she’s done.

  • I don’t know if this is true, but The Drudge Report is saying that, facing a big loss in NH, Hillary may drop out soon. Here’s the report…

    TALK OF HILLARY EXIT ENGULFS CAMPAIGNS
    Mon Jan 07 2008 09:46:28 ET

    Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!

    “She can’t take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. “If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn’t want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats.”

    Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary “could soon be out.”

    “Her money is going to dry up,” Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.

    MORE

    Key players in Clinton’s inner circle are said to be split. James Carville is urging her to fight it out through at least February and Super Tuesday, where she has a shot at thwarting Barack Obama in a big state. But others close to the former first lady now see no possible road to victory, sources claim.

    Developing…

    [The dramatic reversal of fortunes has left the media establishment stunned and racing to keep up with fast-moving changes.

    In its final poll before Iowa, CNN showed Clinton with a two-point lead over Obama. Editorial decisions were being made based on an understanding the Democratic primary race would be close, explained a network executive.]

    http://www.drudgereport.com/flashhn.htm

  • Seems like the race is Obama’s to lose at this point. If he wins big tomorrow–double digits–he’d need the equivalent of a Dean Scream to blow it. Even if he wins by a smaller margin, he’ll retain the momentum.

    RacerX is right–people don’t want to be told not to hope. Obama’s appeal is that he hooks into the best stories we Americans tell about ourselves: meritocracy, opportunity, the capacity of democracy to right past wrongs.

    If he were as substance-free as some of the more shrill Clintonites suggest, that would be one thing. But a lot of poking around has yielded little to substantiate this… in fact, the more one looks at his record in Illinois and (to a lesser extent) in the U.S. Senate, the more impressive his track record looks.

    More and more, I’m starting to see parallels between Obama today and Bill Clinton in 1992–the young, charismatic outsider who clearly made his way in life on his own talents, buoyed by his willingness to challenge Democratic orthodoxy. This presumably is why Bill seems so pissed off: he recognizes a winner when he sees one.

  • Ava, I don’t take anything I see on Drudge very seriously, and neither should you. Especially when it’s an item about Hillary, who Drudge hates passionately.

    Hillary has enough money to stay in through the big primary dates in February. Candidates don’t quit campaigns for lack of support. They quit for lack of money.

  • Okie, I agree with you on the substance here… but Clinton’s campaign has reached out to Sludge throughout 2007, and his coverage until the tide turned against her was (not coincidentally) surprisingly favorable.

    Remember, these guys will do anything to win, and they know that Sludge “rules the world” of media douchebags like Mark Halperin. So they worked him.

  • OkieFromMuskogee – – I’m not saying the report should be taken as fact. At the same time, Hillary’s team does like to tip off Drudge.

  • I was scanning through the AM radio dial Friday and came across the Laura Ingram show, a conservative talk show host. Never listened to it and wouldn’t normally but I was bored. She had Pat Buchanan on as a guest. The thing that surprised me was how much they praised Obama (probably because he beat Hillary). They went on and on about how Obama has really generated excitement and how the Republican party needs to change dramatically if it hopes to win elections in the future. It was interesting to me that the conversation seemed sincere and absent the conservative ideology and talking points (but still with a conservative point of view. That convinced me that this Obama “movement” may be very real indeed.

  • @14:

    While I find many of Pat Buchanan’s positions vile, he generally seems willing to concede when Democrats make a sound political or policy decision. He’s definitely not a by-the-numbers elite Republican, but more of a (racist) conservative-populist.

  • Swan said: “We do not want John McCain to be the next President of the United States.”

    Do we want any of them? I can’t think of one Republican’t who isn’t worse than Dennis Kucinich.

  • Okie,

    NINE-ELEVEN? That’s so convenience-store-esque. Let’s face it—at the rate Ghouliani is going, he’s going to be less popular than this guy:

    http://www.7-eleven.com/

    And although I usually think of “drudge” as the gooey clot of hair that clogs the bathroom sink every once in a while (knowing how to sling a pipe-wrench does wonders for maintaining an old house!), I’ve noted a few more sites that have picked up on this new “inevitability” of the Hillary campaign. A few of the rumblings point to the potential of completely writing off SC. There’s also a hint at the probability that she won’t carry enough states on February 5 to take Obama out of his place as front-runner—which then yields the momentum to him for the final run-up to the convention.

    She’s crippled herself with a “yes-person” senior staff that’s addicted to status-quo numbers. She’s also got a bunch of total idiots at her grass-roots level, and it takes her too long to cut them loose when they do stupid things. It’s like the emperor—close advisers that won’t tell her that the “new clothes” just aren’t there—and an addiction to those who just don’t know how to do the job

    Such weaknesses are not befitting a President—as we have seen in the actions and penchants of the current administration….

  • “and in this corner, wearing the red, white and blue trunks, Barak – TSUNAMI – Obama!”

    my, how quick the tide turns.

  • Of seven polls, only one has Hillary leading Obama, and even this one is within the margin of error.

    For a person who is known to have helped her President husband rely on instant polls to determine how to frame his sound bites for evening news on TV and next day newspapers, thanks to Dick Morris, it has to be extremely distressing for Hillary to have woken up on Monday, January 7, and read these polls in newspapers.

    I have this gut feeling that Obama is gaining momentum, not because people believe he can and will win – maybe more like hop he will win – but because they don’t want Hillary to win! A vote fo Obama is really vote against Hillary. That’s how I have seen it! And I’m a Black Republican!

  • I lost respect for Clinton who fell into the fast talking shell game of negativity, rattling off jabs faster than they can be proven, jumping on anything that might seem like a tangible weapon…like the difference between those in Washington standing up versus sitting down to eat.

    Duh. There is a big difference between private meal tickets with high price tags and gatherings where people are eating finger food. They are held accountable for eating smaller potatoes and Hillary should be able to see past small potatoes.

  • Nice to see a little poll show up the polling establishment.

    Now maybe we can pay less attention to the polls and more to the candidates themselves.

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