New Hampshire Smacks
Washington Mindset On Its Head

By Matt Towery
Southern Political Report
Copyright © 2007 Creators Syndicate

January 9, 2008 — The Washington mindset was smacked in the head by voters in New Hampshire Tuesday.

In the Democratic contest, Sen. Hillary Clinton stopped the Obama train with a stunning victory that left every pollster with egg on their faces. (After successfully polling both caucuses in Iowa, InsiderAdvantage chose to skip New Hampshire as our team, with a collective 100 years of experience, deemed New Hampshire voters “impossible to poll.”)

That said, with Michigan already in her pocket (other candidates fell prey to the DNC’s edict not to participate, thus leaving Clinton the only candidate on that state’s ballot) and a new InsiderAdvantage poll showing Clinton ahead in a critical Florida beauty contest that will give her a bump just a week ahead of “Tsunami Tuesday,” her campaign gains huge new life.

Here are the real talking points from outside the Washington D.C. bubble that people will be buzzing about today:

• Did the Des Moines Register's poll create a false sense of inevitability for Obama? Moreover, did the way-out-of-line polls in New Hampshire follow the Des Moines methodology - thus creating a false impression that Obama was headed for a big win?

• Does the media have the first clue about South Carolina politics? Our Lee Bandy sure does and he had a big laugh at commentators talking about how popular John McCain is in South Carolina.

• Does the national media recognize that hundreds of thousands of Floridians will come out to vote in the Democratic Primary in that state and will attack the DNC if it fails to relent and allow the Florida vote to count? Again, a state, where in last night’s InsiderAdvantage/ Majority Opinion poll, Clinton held a comfortable lead.

• Even if he wins Michigan, can Mitt Romney survive likely defeats in both South Carolina and Florida?

• Can Rudy Giuliani wait until Florida to gain momentum that will carry him to win in Feb 5th contests? And if he rises in the polls in Florida, does he not cut into Giuliani, leaving a fairly strong evangelical crowd to perhaps build on a possible South Carolina win by Huckabee.

• How will the “mystery pollster” possibly deal with so many bad polls in New Hampshire?

And finally, will the many networks which for years asked for our polling methodologies please provide theirs to us. So far they are batting darn near close to zero. We are a little worried about their numbers not meeting Internet News Agency standards. After all, our job is to be right.