Last word on the Bradley effect?

If you haven't read John Judis' analysis at The New Republic yet, you should. Judis has looked at the numbers from New Hampshire and found that 57 percent of those voting in the Democratic primary were women — substantially more than the 53 percent that had been predicted. Change that assumption, and you'd have had poll numbers within the margin of error. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Where are those college students?

I just got an e-mail from a long-time correspondent who reminded me of something that the cable pundits should have known Tuesday night. Remember when they were saying that Obama still had a chance because the college towns hadn't reported? Well, guys, the semester hasn't started yet.

I overlooked that because classes started at Northeastern last week. But we're on an unusual schedule. Very few other schools start until next week, or in some cases even later. Shouldn't the folks who make the big bucks have figured that out?

More on the (Tom) Bradley effect

Over at Hub Blog, Jay Fitzgerald has a good post linking to two commentaries by pollsters. In the New York Times, Andrew Kohut argues that a subtle version of the Bradley effect may have made Barack Obama's support in New Hampshire look stronger than it was — lower-income white voters who might tend to reject a black candidate are also less likely to answer polling questions in the first place.

But John Zogby, in the Huffington Post, says (at least I think this is what he's saying) that the pollsters didn't get it wrong so much as they ran out of time. Uh, OK.

More on the Bradley effect

Only this time I'm talking about Bill, not Tom. Robert David Sullivan, one of my editors at CommonWealth Magazine, has analyzed the results of the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama contest in New Hampshire and finds an eerie resemblance to the 2000 Democratic primary between Al Gore and Bill Bradley.

Apparently the archetype is more important than the person. I can't see much resemblance between Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, but each appealed to New Hampshire's more traditional Democrats. And the smug, self-regarding Bradley couldn't be more different from the electrifying Obama (OK, Obama is a bit self-regarding, too), but both had their base among the affluent, the well-educated and the young.

Robert does things with maps and stats that I can barely comprehend, but he makes a plausible case that the way to win a Democratic primary in New Hampshire is to go after the party regulars. Among other things, unlike young people and independents, they can always be counted on to vote.

Random thoughts on N.H.

So what do you care what I think? Like everyone else, I believed the polls and figured Barack Obama was going to win New Hampshire by 10 points — and then run away with the Democratic nomination. In retrospect, Hillary Clinton's victory makes sense. (It always does in retrospect, doesn't it?) Why? A few thoughts.

1. The gender card. No, I'm not going to say what you think I'm going to say. The gender card was not played so much by Clinton as by her enemies, especially among the media commentariat. I was struck by something Robin Young said on WBUR (90.9 FM) this morning. During the last few days of the campaign, she said, it seemed as though the media were really piling on, gleefully predicting Clinton's demise and all but calling her a "bitch." (Young didn't actually use the word.)

The result may have been that women in New Hampshire were offended enough to cast their votes for Clinton, whereas in Iowa they largely supported Obama. It wasn't a huge leap for them to do so, given that the polls showed they had supported Clinton for months, and had only briefly considered switching to Obama at the end. It didn't help that some of the more idiotic commentators all but accused her of faking tears on Monday.

2. A real primary. Following Clinton's defeat in Iowa, her supporters tried to claim that the boutique nature of the Iowa caucuses had worked against their candidate. The caucuses are custom-made for the sort of affluent, well-educated liberal activists who've comprised Obama's base from day one. The idea was that middle- and lower-income working people are less likely to blow an evening at their local caucus. For one thing, they might be working.

Everyone snickered, of course. But it may be that the Clintonistas were right.

3. Depth of support. One aspect to the race that the media completely missed was the longstanding affection New Hampshire Democrats have for the Clintons. When you see polls showing Clinton losing by a double-digit margin, it's hard to remember that. In the end, though, the idea that voters would abandon her solely on the basis of Obama's Iowa victory was ludicrous, even if it didn't seem that way until the results started coming in.

4. The Bradley effect. Maybe. Probably not, though I raised it as an issue last night. But I do hope some enterprising soul spends some time examining the entrails of all the exit polling from New Hampshire.

Howard Kurtz expertly assesses the media lowlights:

This was delicious. The coverage had been so out of control there was speculation about when Hillary might have to drop out. Polls giving Obama an 8- or 10-point lead were accepted as fact. The news surrounding the former first lady had been uniformly negative for days. She's done everything wrong, Obama has done everything right. She got too emotional in the diner. People just didn't like her. She campaigned in boring prose and Obama in soaring poetry (to use her analogy). Bill was hurting her. A campaign shakeup was on the way. An era was ending. Some pundits were predicting a 20-point Obama margin.

And then the voters actually went to the polls.

The result: Dewey Defeats Truman.

Will the media ever learn? Will they ever just cover this stuff instead of framing everything within the context of what they think (and hope) is going to happen next? I'm not talking about columnists, commentators or — perish the thought! — bloggers. I'm talking about straight-news reporters who spent five days swooning over Obama as the New New Thing, only to learn that they had missed the story once again.

So, do you want another prediction? I think Clinton has regained most, if not all, of her momentum as the inevitable nominee. If Obama wins the South Carolina primary on Jan. 19 — which he certainly could, given that half the state's Democratic electorate is African-American — then he could be right back in it. But who really knows?

As Jay Fitzgerald says, channeling Bill Parcells, "That's why we play the games."

Photo — obviously not from last night — (cc) by Llima. Some rights reserved.

Clinton and Obama

I'm watching Hillary Clinton's speech right now, and the atmospherics are interesting. The crowd behind her is much younger than the one that was with her in Iowa, which shows that she learned from Barack Obama's event last week. For that matter, she looks younger. So does Bill.

Obama's speech was characteristically excellent, but it differed little from the one he delivered in Iowa. For that matter, it differed little from the one he might have given if he'd won tonight. Could he have been unprepared for defeat?

Clinton's speech, at least in a surface kind of way, makes me think of McCain's — pedestrian, but warm enough to compensate. Clinton does not often strike people as warm, so this could prove to be pretty effective.

She's promising "to end the war in Iraq the right way," a mild shot at Obama's unqualified pledge to bring the troops home.

She's really pushing the youth thing: "I want to thank the young people in New Hampshire who came out. They asked the hard questions, and they voted their hearts and minds. And I really appreciate it."

So now what? She survived a near-death experience and won New Hampshire, the first and arguably the most important primary. Clearly nobody knows anything, least of all me. I'll point out only that for the past year, Clinton has seemed like the inevitable nominee with the exception of just the past five days. Now she's the inevitable nominee once again. Unless and until she isn't.

The AP calls it for Clinton

Here's the story. But CNN is holding out.

McCain's speech

Warm but stilted. John McCain is far better interacting with a crowd or giving interviews than he is delivering a speech. He always sounds like he's reading it, and he never sounds like he's totally into it. He gave a perfectly fine speech tonight, but he didn't take advantage of the moment quite to the degree he could have.

I thought Mitt Romney's speech was better than usual. Is he finished? It's hard to believe otherwise. Back in October, Ryan Lizza wrote in the New Yorker:

[Romney] must win the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, states where he has been leading in the polls, and create enough momentum and media attention to carry him through to February 5th, when some twenty states will vote — including New York and California, where Romney is barely known.

He held a huge lead in both states for months, then blew it at the end. He is, as the pundits are pointing out, the only Massachusetts governor or senator ever to lose the New Hampshire primary.

I'm sure Romney will continue at least until Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. But I've got to believe that it's over.

The Obama effect

Is it possible that Barack Obama is falling victim to the Bradley effect? The Bradley effect takes its name from Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles who was comfortably ahead in the polls in the 1982 California governor's race.

Bradley ended up losing to a white Republican, George Deukmejian. It turned out that a small but decisive proportion of white voters had told pollsters they were planning to vote for Bradley but in fact ended up voting for Deukmejian. Some speculated that those white voters had lied to pollsters because they didn't want to be perceived as racists.

Obviously you can vote for Hillary Clinton without being a racist. But the results so far certainly don't jibe with the polls.

Obama could still win, especially since the college towns' votes haven't been counted yet.

On second thought: O-Fish-L, in his inimitable way, argues that it's not likely Obama suffered from the Bradley effect in a Democratic primary — especially in New Hampshire, whose Democrats are overwhelmingly liberal.

Tight race, wrong party

Well, this is unexpected. But isn't it always? Right now, it looks like John McCain will defeat Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin in New Hampshire, which is a slight surprise. But Hillary Clinton is ahead of Barack Obama, with the outcome too close to call — a larger surprise. Strap yourselves in.

McCain widens lead (or not)

For what it's worth — and it's probably not worth much, given the volatility of such things — Zogby is reporting that John McCain is now leading Mitt Romney in New Hampshire by a margin of 36 percent to 27 percent, up from 34 percent to 29 percent in the previous tracking poll. This could mean that McCain has managed to stop Romney's mini-comeback. More likely it means nothing at all.

Enough for Obama and McCain?

If the turnout predictions reported by Boston.com's James Pindell turn out to be accurate — or, as he thinks, prove to be on the low side — then there should be enough independent votes out there to float Barack Obama and John McCain. Pundits have been looking at the independent vote as a zero-sum game, and as Obama has risen, McCain has dropped back a bit closer to Mitt Romney. But that may not be the way things work out.

Channeling no one but himself

New York Times reporter Michael Powell asserts that John McCain is borrowing rhetoric from Barack Obama. Yet in his only example, he shows that McCain is borrowing from himself:

Mr. McCain admits to admiring Mr. Obama's appeal as a "wonderful thing" and has taken to borrowing a line or three. He has been channeling Mr. Obama, calling on Americans to "serve a cause greater than their self-interest," a theme from his campaign in 2000.

Indeed it is a theme from McCain's 2000 campaign. So why does Powell say that McCain is "channeling Mr. Obama"?

Heading south in the North Country

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at what went wrong for Mitt Romney. The favorite in Iowa and New Hampshire barely a month ago, it now looks like it could be all but over when the polls close tomorrow night.

What do I know, anyway?

I watched the Fox News Republican debate earlier this evening, and was surprised to see that Frank Luntz's focus group thought Mitt Romney was the big winner. I thought Romney came off as petulant and twerpy for the first hour-plus, though he did warm up a bit toward the end.

Update: This might explain the Luntz crowd's reaction. Or maybe they're just professional undecideds. (Via Mickey Kaus.)

McCain's media running mates

There's only one statewide newspaper in New Hampshire, the conservative Union Leader. It's already endorsed John McCain, it's already run an editorial instructing its readers to stay away from Mitt Romney (as has the liberal Concord Monitor), and it's got a full-throttle McCain special running right now.

The Monitor has a story similar to the Union Leader's. And the Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh, whose paper has also endorsed McCain, weighs in with a column sympathetic to McCain as well. It's possible that Romney could withstand this low moment in his campaign — but he's only got five days for it to blow over.

Of course, the media have a long-standing love affair with McCain — nothing new there. McCain has been known to jokingly call the media his "base." McCain's finish in Iowa was mediocre at best (yes, I realize he sort of but not quite wrote the state off; but you don't want to be neck and neck with Fred Thompson, for crying out loud), but the media are spinning it in his favor.

On the other hand, there's no better constituency for McCain than New Hampshire's libertarian, secular Republicans. They went for him over George W. Bush in 2000, and it would be no surprise if they go for him next Tuesday.

The difference is that McCain had nowhere else to go after his victory eight years ago. This time, it may be Romney who has nowhere else to go.

I'm guessing the Sunday Globe will front the results of one last pre-New Hampshire poll. I'm also guessing that Romney won't like the numbers.

Sox, Media Nation climb

I was sitting in my car last night, trying to get a signal from a campsite near Mount Monadnock, when J.D. Drew finally worked off the first $1 million of his $70 million contract. Absolutely incredible. At that point, I took a radio into my tent and listened to the wavering ESPN play-by-play on an AM station in New York.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew it was the fifth inning, and the Sox were ahead, 10-1. I turned it off and went to sleep. I still don't know who the heroes were, other than Drew and Curt Schilling. As soon as I post this item, I'm going to find out.

Today I helped lead a group of eight Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts to the top of Monadnock (elevation: 3,165 feet). It was a perfect day, made all the more so because we knew the Sox would be playing a Game Seven tonight.

On top of the world

Right around lunchtime on Saturday, Sept. 28, 1968, I struggled to the top of Mt. Pierce, also known as Mt. Clinton. I was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, out of shape, out of breath, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

At 4,310 feet in elevation, Pierce was the first 4,000-foot mountain I had ever hiked; for that matter, it was the first mountain of any size whose summit I had reached. By the end of the day, I would also hike to the top of Mt. Pleasant (now Mt. Eisenhower). We camped at Lakes of the Clouds, an activity that, because of the fragile alpine vegetation, would become a federal crime within a few years. The next morning, beset by clouds, wind and rime ice, we struggled to the top of Mt. Washington (6,288 feet), the highest peak in New England and home to what is often described as the worst weather in the world.

Once I got over my never-again reaction, I was hooked. I learned that there are 48 peaks in New Hampshire of 4,000 feet or more, and that a few serious hikers set out to reach them all. I plugged away, hitting a lot in the '70s and a few in the '80s and '90s. Starting in 2000, when my son, Tim, was old enough to come with me, I resolved to finish the list before I was too old and decrepit to do it anymore.

This past Saturday, just shy of my 51st birthday, I made it. It took me nearly 39 years, which might be some sort of a record — albeit a very different record from the one set by an ultramarathoner named Tim Seaver a few year ago. Seaver did all 48 mountains in less than four days.

My son and I drove to Lincoln, N.H., on Friday, and set up camp at Big Rock. It rained all night, which made me wonder about the forecast of blue skies for Saturday. As it turned out, the weather was almost perfect — cool and not too sunny, if a bit on the humid side. We started out along the Hancock Notch Trail, from the Kancamagus Highway, at 9:30 a.m. The footing was flat and easy, and by a little after 11 we had reached the split on the Hancock Loop Trail, which would take us to the north and south peaks of Mt. Hancock — summits number 47 and 48.

Which one to take first? The hike up the north peak was a bit longer (0.7 mile as opposed to 0.5), and also steeper, with rougher footing. Tim and I decided to go up the north side so that we wouldn't have to hike down it and risk our necks. It turned out to be a good decision — there was a lot of loose rock, and there's no way we would have wanted to try to descend along that route.

The hike to the top was pretty much straight up, and we had to pause frequently to catch our breath. We reached the summit around noon. There was a great view from the nearby outlook, and I wish we'd stayed longer. But I wanted to make it to my final summit as soon as possible.

We hit the summit of the south peak right around 1 p.m. I'd done it. It was also Tim's 17th 4,000-footer, so he's well on his way. A guy from Worcester named Steve, who was hiking with his girlfriend and another couple, took our picture. Steve, who's also 51, has 47 summits under his belt, and is planning to make it to number 48 — Mt. Isolation — next weekend.

We made it back to the car before 4 p.m. and headed off to the Yankee Smokehouse. And thus ended a journey that took in parts of five decades. I'm sending in my application to the Four Thousand Footer Club today.