Live Free or Die at the Polls
After two “underdog” victories from candidates entrenched in New Hampshire politics for decades — the Washington Post, in John McCain‘s case, went so far as to call it a “Lazarus-like Resurrection” — the primaries have become a wide-open field. Even more unpredictable is the cockeyed polling data that continues to pour out of of New Hampshire: Gary Langer of ABC News reports on “New Hampshire’s Polling Fiasco.” In “Bad Bet,” Slate asks why the data was so wrong. Politico comments on how the results “made fools of the pollsters, pundits, operatives and even some people in [Hillary Clinton‘s] campaign.” Meanwhile, after the “Broadcast News moment” at a New Hampshire coffeehouse — isn’t William Hurt sidelined by the strike? — the New York Times comments on “A Show of Emotion That Reverberated Beyond the Campaign,” and gets feedback from Marianne Pernold Young, the 64-year-old Obama supporter whose questioned provoked tears. Young “sounded mystified over the reaction, and the reaction to the reaction, to her question. After all, her original inquiry to Mrs. Clinton had been a fairly light one. ‘My question is very personal: How do you do it?’ she had asked Mrs. Clinton. ‘Who does your hair?'”