Why the polls got Clinton-Obama vote wrong

Washington Post:

While pre-election polls in New Hampshire got Sen. John McCain's margin of victory about right on the Republican side, late polls fundamentally mischaracterized the status of the Democratic race.

Polls released in the two days before the election had Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) with a five- to 13-percentage-point lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in the Granite State, but Clinton defeated Obama, 39 percent to 36 percent.

Most polls accurately reflected the large bloc of likely Democratic voters yet to make up their minds or who said they were open to switching their support in the closing days. On the network exit poll, nearly 4 in 10 said they made their final decision within the last three days; 17 percent said they decided how to vote yesterday. Among those making up their minds on the day of the primary, 39 percent supported Clinton, 36 percent Obama. Clinton did even better among the third of the electorate who settled on their choice a month or more ago.

However, the late polls missed on how votes divided by gender. Pre-election polls from CNN-WMUR-University of New Hampshire and USA Today-Gallup showed Obama and Clinton about evenly splitting female voters and Obama winning men by a margin of 2 to 1. But Clinton won among women by 12 percentage points, exit polls showed, and she lost among men more narrowly than suggested, drawing 29 percent to Obama's 40 percent.

Yesterday's result is sure to fuel debate among poll-watchers about the accuracy of polls in contests with African American candidates. In several well-known past examples, pre-election polls of such campaigns underestimated support for the white candidates. But a strong showing by polls in 2006 in elections with black candidates seemed to put that notion finally to rest.

Other factors that are more probable than the role of race include "likely voter" modeling, with pollsters perhaps over-counting the boost of enthusiasm among Obama supporters following his victory in Iowa last Thursday.

Independents may have opted at the last minute to participate in the Republican primary, depriving Obama of voters.

...

In addition to winning women by a double-digit margin, she did significantly better among those seeking a candidate with the "right experience" than she did in Iowa, and she also did better among the majority of those emphasizing "change." Obama still did much better than Clinton among voters seeking a new direction, but with this group and among young voters, Clinton narrowed the Illinois senator's advantage.

On the Republican side, the Election Day poll showed how little the New Hampshire electorate resembled Iowa's, and McCain's success stemmed from those differences.

...

Identity politics helped Clinton in New Hampshire, but it is likely to help Obama in states with a more significant black population. There will be a tendency to overstate the significance of this election in both parties. That was certainly the case in the 2000 Republican race. Expect Huckabee to make a comeback in South Carolina, and I expect Rudy to start doing well in Florida.

One thing I noticed during the Fox News coverage was that Rudy Giuliani was the only candidate with a big ad buy. He has an unusual strategy, but that ad buy was obviously hitting at his major targeted audience.