Sherry Chandler

Andrew Kohut gets it wrong in the NYTimes—or why the pollers failed:

But another possible explanation cannot be ignored — the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.

In exploring this factor, it is useful to look closely at the nature of the constituencies for the two candidates in New Hampshire, which were divided along socio-economic lines.

Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Obama by 12 points (47 percent to 35 percent) among those with family incomes below $50,000. By contrast, Mr. Obama beat Mrs. Clinton by five points (40 percent to 35 percent) among those earning more than $50,000.

There was an education gap, too. College graduates voted for Mr. Obama 39 percent to 34 percent; Mrs. Clinton won among those who had never attended college, 43 percent to 35 percent.

…

Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews.

Yessirreebob, Andy, us pore dumb whites is racist as all get-out. That’s why we voted for Hillary instead of, say, the populist white man in the race, namely John Edwards. Edwards, the Southerner, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Edwards, the man who’s pro-Union, who vows to give us all affordable health care.

But wait, we’re sexist, too. What do your numbers do about that?

No possibility, of course, that the NH voters weren’t quite ready to crown Obama or to set up a charisma contest between him and Huckabee. No chance anyone decided that Hillary is smart, dedicated, and tough.

Has to be something ugly, like racism.

I heard a pollster — was it Kohut? Or maybe it was a psychiatrist — taking this line on All Things Considered last night and it makes me mad. It’s like, somehow, we have to vote for Obama because he’s black and it strikes me as reverse just one more form of racism.

from May Sarton The House by the Sea: A Journal (W. W. Norton, 1977):

Sunday, July 18^th [1976]

…We did stay up to hear [Jimmy] Carter’s acceptance speech [at the Democratice National Convention] and I’m glad we did. In bed afterward I thought that what he represents is the gentle revolution I talked about in my commencement address at Clark last year. The words “simple” and “compassion” were often used by him, and simple compassion is something we have not seen in government for a very long time, since Lincoln. It is hard to imagine what it will be like, if he is elected—the sense of a real new beginning.

I happened upon this passage on Tuesday morning, when the narrative of Obama’s inevitability was at its height, and reading it, I couldn’t help but pause to reflect how many of these shining men we’ve elected (or tried to elect) in my lifetime. How many gentle revolutions. How many mornings in America.

And how, in the end, it has usually not been the President who shaped events but events that shaped the President.

I don’t love my country any more or less now than I did when I was sixteen and star-dazzled by John Kennedy. It’s like family. I was born into it, I’m in it and of it, for good and ill.

But I have lost my faith in and my need for heroes.

The woman who moved Hillary to tears, a woman of my own age, said she voted for Obama because he moved her to tears with his promise of a new beginning.

I’ve been moved to tears by an episode of “Laverne and Shirley.”

I want some reason to vote for Obama other than his youth and golden tongue. Something more than sentiment and nostalgia.

Or, for that matter, the fact that he’s a socially acceptable black man, one we could elect and pet ourselves on the backs for our liberalism without too much fear that we’ll have a White House full of dreadlocks and rap lyrics.

What’s more I want some reason not to vote for Hillary other than press-corps schadenfreude. Something more than the conventional narrative of a cold manipulative bitch who can somehow cry on demand.

I don’t know whether it was Hillary’s emotion or her good ground organization, or maybe a little bit of both, that won her New Hampshire but I’m glad she won it.

I’m glad the woman showed that she could stand up to the fight. I’m glad we’ll have no coronation this year. I’m glad we’ll have a real primary. I’m glad we’ll get a longer look at the candidates before one is chosen. I may even have some hope that I’ll get to cast a meaningful vote this year.

I don’t want the press corps choosing my presidential candidate. And neither, apparently, did the people of New Hampshire.