Here's a post from NR about just how inaccurate the polls were before the N.H. voting. No mention of the Bradley Effect, even though Mickey Kaus came very close to predicting this. (He didn't actually predict it: "I'm as flummoxed as everyone else, having gone along with the near-universal consensus that Obama would win." But it was the natural consequence of his Iowa analysis.)
Slate published an off-the-wall Christopher Hitchens piece about Obama (off-the-wall even by Hitch standards). Despite the headline, nobody I knew had any sort of obsession with Obama's race (then again, none of NY Times theater critic Pauline Kael's friends voted for Nixon.) So I was already predisposed to reject Hitch's premise, and must admit I stopped reading at "And why is a man with a white mother considered to be 'black,' anyway?"
Speaking of Slate, John Dickerson says HRC won by making herself more available to NH voters. Emily Bazelon says she won because of identity politics (that's not what she calls it -- she calls it "The XX Factor" -- but that's what it is).
I wasn't a Ron Paul acolyte, but I knew at least one. This kind of gloating is just unbecoming. (Day By Day is still making Norman Hsu references? What kind of shelf life is that?)
Photo ID requirements for voters: The case for. The case against. I find the latter article singularly unconvincing: "In the entire history of Indiana, the total number of reported instances of [in-person impersonation] fraud is zero" Yet around the country, votes are routinely cast in the name of dead people still on the polls -- and dead people are in no position to report this.
I don't know about you, but I've always been dumbfounded by the idea that you can just walk in, claim to be any given person, and vote, no questions asked. (More precisely I'm dumbfounded that at least in California, precincts find it worth the trouble to announce this policy so conspicuously.)
But then, I'm also dumbfounded by precincts that use any voting system other than those optical scan cards. It pains me when posts like this use an oversimplified dichotomy between machine counts and hand counts. (Optical scan ballots are counted by machine, but exist as/on paper such that any recount can be easily done by hand.)
Posted by Matt Bruce at January 9, 2008 08:45 AMI've personally found the Bradley Effect, the Reverse Bradley Effect, and all the other theoretical tripe pundits are peddling to be bollocks on stilts. There are very likely more "theories" than there are outcomes, and I don't think that makes whichever person happened to hitch their wagon to the "correct" one into a genius.
Although the "NH protected its brand" concept (in the sense that they ran counter to Iowa and some of the CW, again) makes the most sense of anything I've heard. It's especially great since it can't be used idiotically when upcoming states vote.
Posted by: ZD at January 9, 2008 11:17 PM