This means that a lot of the Independents will probably decide to vote in the Republican Primary and if New Hampshire is anything to go by they will vote McCain.

McCain also took Michigan in 2000 which should help him. On the other hand Romney’s dad was the governor there, so I do agree with you that we shouldn’t necessarily write of Romney.

There’a a few interesting points to make – firstly that Obama’s speech was still very good and he will take South Caroline.

McCain’s speech was annoyingly long and I hope his campaign dies a horrible death asap. In fact, it will soon. I think he’ll sink in South Caroline, where Huckabee will be back.

Thompson is over, and I think Giuliani will be over after Florida.

Crap. The AP have called it for Clinton. CNN refusing to call it right now.

As for Edwards…the exit polls really show that he is hurting Obama more. If you hate Hillary then you are more likely to vote for Edwards than if you hate Obama. Quite clearly people that dislike Hillary haven’t found a single candidate to latch on to necessarily (Edwards takes 25% of the vote I believe), while people that dislike Obama have already latched on to Hillary (80% or so).

Having said that CNN has said that a few college towns which should favour Obama haven’t started reporting yet.

Very interesting exit poll which says that Obama does better with richer democrats while poorer democrats favour Hillary. In the long run this could be more significant than the women’s vote.

The next question is…is this early deflation of the Obama campaign a good thing in the long run, given that it’s not a destruction of the campaign?

Lee, not sure I totally agree with the Brown analogy as a lot of the hype as been from media polls rather than Obama staffers.

Also, although its tempting to say that Edwards is hurting Obama in New Hampshire he should actually be taking away votes from Hillary.

Dare i stick my neck out but i think Hilary will get this one, she has advantage with the Women and the older generation,. When you take into account that only 18% of the vote was made up by under 30s, Obama needs there to be a higher male turn out to counter balance the age stats.

Plus im hooked on this amazing screen CNN keep using to break down the different areas that looks like a massive Ipod touch!

I’m guessing this means we should scale down Obama’s margin of victory to 2 or 3 points. Especially as the exit polls show that Hillary has won easily amongst women. I wonder why that might have happened :p

It really looks as if Edwards is the one hurting Obama the most at the moment by existing in the race.

http://www.politico.com/nhprimaries/nhmap-popup.html

Btw, I suspect that because everyone said that Obama was going to win comfortably and Romney might beat McCain, a lot of independents decided to vote for McCain thinking that Obama would win anyway.

I’ll read the link and get back to you on that. However, the short answer to your question is: tokenism. An Obama presidency would a sign of strength in American democracy not in and of itself but if delivers the goods. The same could be said of a Clinton Mk II presidency.

Exit polls suggest that a significant number of women voted over men, and given how much power clinton seems to command over women voters this might go some way to explain why it’s not as runaway as some suggested. The exit poll also says that people think that Obama has the best chance while also being less good for the role of commander in chief. Clinton also seems to gain more from any anti-obama feeling than Obama gains from anti-clinton feeling. And finally, as I think O said earlier, it’s clear that Clinton commands much more power on the issue of the economy, while Obama wins with Iraq.

All in all the people of New Hampshire seem to think that Clinton will be stronger in the role and be more respected, and even be a better leader…but that Obama is more electable and that he will bring about more change and is therefore more likely to be there come the end.