US Election Odds: What just happened in Texas and Ohio?

US Politics / Chicken Dinner / 07 March 2008 / Leave a Comment

Chicken Dinner tell us why polls are rubbish (not like prediction markets), how Hillary pulled off her wins in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday and why she is now very firmly back in business

What just happened?

Hillary Clinton - what are you doing here? Wasn't Dr Obama supposed to have put you to sleep last Tuesday? Who can we believe any more? Certainly not the pollsters. They have got this election so consistently wrong that they probably can't predict which day comes after Friday with any confidence any more.

The day before the New Hampshire primary every published poll had put Obama ahead by an average of 8 points. Clinton won the next day by two. On Super Tuesday, Obama was said to be ahead by between 13 to 23 points in California. Clinton won by ten. We can add to the list of lousy forecasts Missouri, Massachusetts, Georgia, Alabama, Wisconsin, and now Texas and Ohio, which even Gallup, the holy grail of polls, fluffed.

With an embarrassment of celebrity endorsements and an almost infinite inflow of cash donations, Obama looked more set for victory on March 4 than any contest so far. So what went so wrong?

1) The pollsters forgot to count the poor people

Exit polls say that late-deciding voters broke two-to-one for Clinton and it's no coincidence that the majority of them were earning $50,000 or less.

The polls leading up to Tuesday's primaries showed a bias towards higher income voters - poorer voters had either not made up their mind or weren't willing to share information. This powerful bracket of working class voters somehow slipped past the pollsters undetected.

A more relaxed Obama fatally neglected to concentrate on the unions and impoverished rural areas as he had done so extensively in Wisconsin, thereby turning away the support of a silent army of voters which, as tradition dictates, plumped for Clinton.

2) The press is starting to go off Obama

As the race drags on, the formerly untouchable Illinois senator is now being challenged as to whether he can actually deliver. Last week he was knocked back on the ropes by his challenger over his relationship with a Chicago slumlord and for inconsistencies in his position on the North American Free Trade Agreement. His reputation remains relatively unscathed, but it did mean his week was tied down with a series of press conferences when he could have hit the stump, raising morale, and the negative campaigning is only going to get worse.

3) The Clinton camp landed a great punch with a security ad

A television campaign featured an ad with a "3AM call" to the White House, that implied that Obama was too politically immature to deal with issues of national security, a subject that has previously been sidelined by health and economics. Obama's rebuttal (an anti-Iraq ad) did him no favours in Texas, a state which likes the fact so much military spending happens there.

4) Hillary had a lot of "home" support

Never underestimate the power of a geographical bond. Clinton's first job in politics was in Texas and in her own words Tuesday felt like a homecoming. Her association with the region gave her a broad profile, a platform which she used to reconstitute her coalition of traditional Democratic voters. In both Texas and Ohio she enjoyed clear majorities (60%+) with older voters and Hispanics, and she edged Obama with women and white men once again. Obama is probably also haunted by the saying "As goes Ohio, so goes the nation." Ohio didn't go for him.

So is Hillary back in charge?

Well, she hasn't made inroads into Obama's delegate count, but she has earned a crucial lease of life. Clinton has also found weakness in Obama, and with seven weeks until the next major primary (Pennsylvania), she will draw as much blood as she can out of it.

Obama is still the favourite to win [1.4] to be the Democrat nominee on Betfair, and rightly so - he's managed to conservatively build and maintain a healthy lead in delegates over a period of weeks. But he faces a problem. No longer the underdog, he either has to put an end to his "nice guy" image and fight tough, or be minced up by a re-energised Clinton attack machine. At [3.9], Clinton is still a great ticket to get on (if not the great value 6.0 or so she was a week ago.)

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