Brown's Surge and Remembering New Hampshire, and Hillary's primary rebound

[jefferson_dem]

Goodness, I remember NH 2008 well. This entry is from nutjobby neocon American Spectator but makes some totally valid points. It ain't over, folks.

Brown's Surge and Remembering New Hampshire
By Philip Klein on 1.18.10 @ 10:32AM

A new Public Policy Polling survey -- the group's final poll before Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts -- gives Scott Brown a 5-point lead over Martha Coakley. While we've had a lot of polls that have been all over the place depending on the assumptions the pollsters make about the composition of the electorate, the new PPP poll is helpful because we can compare it to a poll taken by the same firm a week ago and detect a trend. In the poll taken by PPP last week, Brown was up 1 point. At the time, that was seen as a wake up call to Democrats that was supposed to get them to start taking the race seriously. So in the intervening week, Coakley and Democrats opened up new lines of attack, tying Brown to outside conservative groups, attack him for being in bed with Wall Street, and clumsily suggesting he wants hospitals to deny care to all rape victims. Despite this, Brown's momentum has continued to grow -- he even now receiving 20 percent support from people who voted for Obama. And while his negatives went up during the week, his favorability rating held steady at 56 percent (vs. 57 percent a week ago) while Coakley's favorables dropped from 50 percent to 44 percent after a series of gaffes.

Yet through all of the growing enthusiasm behind Brown, I'm still reminded of the New Hampshire primary in 2008. Barack Obama swept into the state fresh from his victory in Iowa with all of the momentum. He was drawing larger and more energetic crowds. And polls showed that he had erased Hillary Clinton's lead in the state and was poised for a comfortable win -- maybe even in the double digits. I vividly remember showing up at the gym at Southern New Hampshire University outside of Manchester, where Clinton's election night event was being held, and it had the feel of a funeral because even her supporters expected her to lose. And yet Clinton pulled off the victory. In the end, it turned out that Obama had too much of a gap to make up in New Hampshire. The Clinton machine was really good at turning out the vote. And the polls hadn't reflected the late-breaking news of Clinton's tear filled episode at a diner the day before the primary, which helped boost her numbers among women.

Brown isn't as well-positioned in the polls as Obama was in New Hampshire going into primary day, and most pollsters view the Massachusetts Senate race as a toss up. But the momentum for Brown, the enthusiasm of his supporters, the collapse of Coakley, have all contributed to the perception that this is now Brown's race (he's up to 63.9% on Intrade).Yet we haven't seen any polls that have reflected President Obama's visit yesterday, and just like Clinton, Coakley will have the machine behind her (actually, she'll have Clinton's machine). So, Brown still may very well win the race, it honestly could go either way. But however inept Coakley is as a candidate, however much energy Brown's campaign seems to have, I keep reminding myself that as a Republican running in Massachusetts, he needs everything to break right, and I keep thinking back to New Hampshire.

http://spectator.org/blog/2010/01/18/browns-surge-and-remembering-n

[Jennicut]

1. The PPP is a robopoll as well, and can reflect that Brown's more enthusiastic

voters will pick up that phone and do that poll. They showed a lower approval rating for Obama in Mass. then most polls show. It can sometimes be that the pollsters expectations are showing up in the poll without any real context of how the race may actually go. Everything does depend on turnout.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. does this call cell phones?

[Jennicut]

3. I don't think so.

[FrenchieCat]

4. New Hampshire is closs too, as far as having lots of Indies, hey?