It's the Bradley effect, otherwise (but usually not) known as the Wilder effect, after a couple African-American candidates who were hurt by it.

Effect is called the Wilder (Douglas Wilder, 1st Black gov. of Virginia) or the Bradley effect (former mayor Tom Bradley of LA, also an African American. Secret ballots do change the way people vote, so it is not just this effect, whatever you call it.

This is a sad moment. Hillary Clinton is for sure the status quo. She is second in campaign contributions from healthcare companies and insurance companies. She attacked Barack Obama on his voting record with Iraq, however she is the one who put us there. If Hillary is such an intelligent woman, why could she not see it was a terrible mistake to invade Iraq. I thought attorneys researched, questioned and were advocates for the truth. She is too involved with special interest. Wake up America! Hillary Clinton is part of the machine!

(1) rings true because the NH voters (particularly indeps) were coming around to dislike Romney as a phony (to use the words of the Manchester newspaper editorial) and also he had many robocalls to use up all that money he spent in NH, also not nice.

Wow Susan, "I thought attorneys researched, questioned and were advocates for the truth." That bubble shoulda been busted quite a while ago!

Perhaps she won because she got the most votes?

You forgot sending out Bill to do a hatchet job. I thought it was an embarrassment, but it worked on the feeble minded.
Just watched her speech. I don’t remember verbatim, but she said something like “In the past days I looked to you and found my true voice”. Really? Do any of you people buy this? I have to say that the only person on the planet less sincere than Hillary is Rachel Ray. Total fake. You’ve been scammed!

Raspetteo - Please don't get logical.

i have a completely different view of the primaries thus far.... poor mr or mrs next president

Raspetteo --

I get the joke/sarcasm. I'm not trying to explain why she won. I'm trying to explain *why the polls were so wrong*. Something changed in the last 24-48 hours of this campaign that pushed Clinton over the edge.

If I was explaining why she won, I'd cite her success with workers making under $50,000, and her ability to appeal unmarried women, etc etc.

It's all about the women. They are not going to stand by and let the first viable female presidential candidate crash and burn. When push came to shove, they switched their votes to Hillary. The media's hyper-scrutiny of her and the emotion in the coffee shop may have helped.

Ｉ　am agree it!
as if it look like a lie!

i think your list is good, but i would add a couple of reasons as well - namely:

7. organization - getting out the vote. if you've ever worked on a big campaign, voting day is the most important day, and the clintons were national campaign veterans, with precinct captains and scrutineers and drivers and phoners all lined up like union workers and ducks in a neat little row.

8. obama made a big mistake - he started neglecting "the beef." some smart asses told him to, but it was a stupid thing to do...if he had shown a thorough command of the issues, he wouldn't have turned off traditional blue collar democrats so much.

Want to know why the polls are so wrong?

Open up a statistics book!

Random sampling only works on events that are periodic or events that occur according to a random probability distribution!

If every voter determined their choice by rolling a dice, or picking the candidate round robin according to their order entering the voting building, the polling would work perfectly!

Polling is a psychological one and the idea that you can somehow "magically" use random sampling for non-random nor nor-periodic events, is the PROBLEM!

For the mathematically challenged let me give you an example of when random sampling does and does not work.

It DOES work if you have 100 product making machines and you do a random sample on the products and you find out 2% defective rate.

That means 2 out of the machines are bad, so 2% of the products are going to be bad (random distribution).

It DOES work if you have a 1,000,000 by 1,000,000 dot picture that DOES repeat every 10 x 10 dots, and you do AT LEAST a 10 X 10 random sample.

That means you DOT NOT need to sample the whole picture to see the entire picture (perodic distribution).

It DOES NOT works if you have a 1,000,000 by 1,000,000 dot picture that DOES NOT repeatin any way, unless you sample the ENTIRE picture.

That means you DO need to sample the whole picture to see the entire picture (non-perodic distribution).

Think about how ILLOGICAL it is when so called "experts" say that you can sample 1,000 people in a population of 1,000,000 and have a maximum of only 4% in error?

Do you believe that some "god" is forcing the other 999,990 less 4% of the other people that the "experts" did not sample to vote the same way to preserve that 4% margin of error?

Can you say diebold.

I think it is much simplier than all the "aboves".
Polling and prediction is just not an adequate way to determine voters, especially in this close of a contest.

Hillery happens to collect a great deal of money from the insurance companies. How can she do anything for the working people.? What I am saying is she is bought

And I thought the women of NH were smart.

Wow, the first woman president! Woop-de-bleeping-do! Voting Obama in just because he's black, or Clinton just because she's a female, is wrong. I'd rather vote republican in either case. People are stupid. We're doomed as a species.

I am so glad the pundits and talking heads on CNN/MSNBC etc. were wrong in predicting victory for this one. And let's not forget the monstrosity that was the 2000 Election.

"WE CAN STILL WIN, AND HEAL THIS NATION"

I guess Democrats have to see the man in the mirror, and admit their bigotry. The Cynical New Hampshire Democrats could not see the nobility of Obama's message. What a pity

Critical Thinker- that is the most convoluted and difficult to follow explanation of polling samples I have ever seen. I majored in economics with coursework in statistics and I still have no idea what you said.

Wait a minute. Did you take a look at the delegate numbers? Obama won the caucus votes. Hillary won the superdelegates, who are members of the DNC and/or democractic governors and other party hacks.

Check out this link
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/scorecard/#D

Another factor I believe is that alot of Dem activists and voters are looking for a fight regardless of who they support. When Clinton was the frontrunner before Iowa it motivated Obama supporters but also demotivated her supporters.

After Obama's win in Iowa the reverse happened Clinton's supporters were motivated and that showed at the polls, at the same time alot of Obama's supporters especially the younger ones choose not to vote or volunteer as much time since his win was seen as "inevitable".

Let's see. The voters are tired of the partisan, militaristic status quo, so a plurality of New Hampshire Democrats vote for a candidate who is at least as hawkish and divisive as George W. Bush--a fortiori, at the same point in her career, far more. I'm sure her new personality du jour, cooked up from the menu proposed by consultants, has helped. No one cares that she hasn't shed a tear for the 4000 Americans and million Iraqis who have died in a war, founded on a patently fraudulent casus belli, that she has always gleefully supported; it's enough that she choked up about the difficulties of campaigning, riding on her husband's frayed and semen-stained coattails while portaying herself as a feminist, a strong and self-sufficient women while Bill talks as if he were running for reelection. At least she seems to have discovered the first person plural.

Simple math demonstrates that the N.H. democratic primary result is not an example of the “Bradley Effect”. Pollster.com tracks national polls and creates standard estimates based on the results of many different poles. Their standard estimates leading up to the vote were 36.7% for Obama, 30.4% for Clinton, 18.4% for Edwards, 5.6% for Richardson, 2.5% for Biden, and apparently 6.4% undecided or voting for minor candidates. The actual results were 37% for Obama (almost exactly correct), 40% for Clinton, 17% for Edwards, 5% for Richardson, and 1% for Kucinich.

Now do the math. The only candidates that actually lost ground on Clinton were white males (Edwards and Biden). She obviously also gained some support from people who were undecided. More than likely, the massive media attention focused on her heart felt explanation for why she is running and her debate performance helped her capture undecided voters, and also take votes away from other candidates in the race. There is really no evidence of a “Bradley Effect” since the only candidates that actually lost votes to Clinton were white.

FX