Well, New Hampshire has voted and at least one thing is clear now -- we should ignore the polls in this primary season. The polls told us that Clinton would win Iowa and Obama scored a clear victory. The polls told us that Obama would easily win New Hampshire and Clinton came out the victor.
This election is just too fluid for the polls to be accurate. In New Hampshire, nearly 47% of voters said they made up their mind in the final week of the primary campaign there.
New Hampshire was probably the death knell for my candidate -- Bill Richardson. He was only able to corral 5% of the Democratic vote. I think he hoped for and needed at least 12%. I'll stick with him for a while because I don't like going back on my word, but the day is approaching when I'll have to make a decision between Edwards and Obama.
New Hampshire has to be considered a disappointment for Edwards. He finished a poor third with only 17%. He must do better soon or this will become a two-way race. That makes South Carolina very important. He doesn't have to win it, but he cannot again finish a poor third -- not that close to home. I hope he does well there, and again on February 5th. I'd like it to still be a three-way race when Texas gets to vote.
Right now, it looks like both Clinton and Obama have enough support to stay in the race for a while. If Edwards can stick around, it's within the realm of possibility that none of the three would have enough delegates to win at convention time. It probably won't happen, but for a political junkie like me it's an exciting prospect.
The same could happen with the Republicans. Huckabee, McCain and Romney have all won a small state. Guiliani is not out of it, and Paul could still be a spoiler. At this time, there's just no way to predict what will happen in that race.
Once again, the Democratic Party was the big winner of the night. Both Clinton and Obama had significantly larger vote totals than McCain (the Republican winner). Just like in Iowa, the majority of Independents chose to vote in the Democratic primary. Hopefully, this trend will continue and the Independents will choose to vote Democratic in large numbers next November.
But as exciting as Iowa and New Hampshire have been, less than one-half of one percent of the voters in this country have now made their choice known. There is still a long way to go.
According to CNN, 333 of the 4,049 Democratic delegates have now been chosen or pledged. Here's how it stands right now:
Clinton..........183
Obama..........78
Edwards..........52
Richardson..........19
Kucinich..........1
I am a little concerned that LHS Associates software was counting the votes for most of New Hampshire. The hand-counted returns had Obama winning. It is extremely easy to rig the vote counting machines. A few recounts from townships using their paper ballots would resolve my concerns.
ReplyDeleteDo they have paper ballots to recount?
ReplyDeleteHere in Texas, many counties are completely at the mercy of the easily hackable electronic machines with no paper trail at all.