From Hope to Change to Comebacks: Hillary Takes New Hampshire

The trouble with relying on the youth vote is that the demographic, when it comes to actually voting, is unreliable. Barack Obama's supporters may have been reminded of that tonight as Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of the New Hampshire Democratic primary.

The problem with pundits in the media and polling is that they are very often wrong. Clinton's three percentage point winning margin was a surprise to all of them.

However, let's get a little perspective here: Clinton was a prohibitive favorite in the (albeit eventually wrong) New Hampshire polls up until the Iowa caucuses. Only on Sunday did new polls show Obama taking a lead on the tails of his strong Iowa win. Perhaps so as to cover their collective behinds, the media is calling Hillary's win an "historic" comeback. Let's not get too carried away with the hyperbole.

Going into this primary an Obama win would have spelled near doom for Clinton, at least that was the conventional wisdom. Forget that it would have been crazy to call the race over only after two small states had weighed in on the matter. Nevertheless, Obama would have been in a very strong position going forward.

Now that Clinton has taken New Hampshire, the race for the Democratic nomination and the White House enters the meat of the election schedule, with Super Duper Tuesday the big prize.

What should be of interest to the rest of the nation is the turnout. Democratic turnout numbers for 2000 and 2004 were 154,639 and 219,787 respectively. The final numbers aren't in for this year yet, but with 95% of the precincts reporting 278,577 votes have been counted, and projections are that there will be close to 70,000 more votes cast this year than in 2004. In contrast the Republican turnout numbers for 2000 and 2004 were 236,802 and 67,833, a small turnout in a year with no candidates other than Bush (a lot of the votes actually were cast for Democratic candidates). This year the number is at 230,833 with 95% of the precincts reporting, so it looks like they'll just surpass the 2000 totals, but not by much.

Just one further note: John Kerry got 84,377 votes in 2004. Both Obama and Clinton are well past that total by a good margin.

While Iowa's numbers were substantially greater than in the past (~124,000 in 2004, and ~227,000 in 2008), the jump in turnout in New Hampshire, while notable, was not nearly as great a percentage. This is as much to do with the fact that a secret ballot election is more appealing to most voters, so one would expect that more voters would regularly vote in primaries than in a caucus, and that it takes a particularly compelling election to bring out people to a caucus.

Washington state caucus attendees in 2004 will remember just how many more people turned out for them than in 2000. If these first two states are any indicator, we should expect packed precinct and legislative caucuses this year, particularly if the races are still close by then, which they very well may be now that the early knock out punch has been avoided by Clinton.

However, returning to my first thought, while turnout is an indicator of the interest in this election on the Democratic side, the winning nominee will need to win with more than just the younger and first time voters, but with voters across the board. Exit polls suggest that Clinton did very well in New Hampshire with women voters, particularly unmarried women, while Obama scored best with younger voters. Clinton also appealed best to the Democratic base.

There were a lot of tears of joy at Obama's win from younger people, and certainly a few from the more seasoned observers, yet as we saw in 2004 with the Dean campaign, while the race struggle is still a great one in this nation, the struggle between the Boomer generation and Generation Xbox is still being won by the senior citizens of America. Obama's campaign will be living on the edge if in each state his only hope is that voters not known for voting actually get out and, you know, vote! He needs to appeal to that older generation that seems to be considering Bill Clinton's premise that Obama is too much of an unknown quantity, and America would be "rolling the dice" if they choose him.

Let's not forget that the central theme of the campaign season last week became "Change", but that to many change is a very uncomfortable proposition. People don't like change, because change is disruptive and bothersome. It requires effort to adapt to and embrace change. Most people would rather not have to deal with it, and as a nation we've yet to prove that we're willing to do the hard work being asked of us. While Hillary Clinton isn't campaigning against change, she benefits from human nature to shun it, which gives her "Experience" argument a chance to be heard. With her renewed effort to back up her sales pitch with a smiling face and personal touch, Clinton has Obama needing to win over her core supporters in order to prevail.

The youth of America may want to inherit the world, but the older generation isn't quite ready to pass the torch without a fight.

Now on to Nevada.

Update: The final results are in and the total turnout count for the Democratic primary was 287,322, a gain of 67,535 over the 2004 election, up almost 31%. On the Republican side, 238,548 votes were counted, up from their 2000 high of 236,802 by only 1,746, less than 1%.

I should also point out that despite Clinton winning 39.1% of the vote to Obama's 36.5%, both candidates picked up 9 pledged delegates in New Hampshire.

Victories are determined in many different ways.