Handshakes, not the Internet, win N.H. for Clinton and McCain
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, with his wife Cindy, thanks supporters in a victory speech Tuesday evening.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com )NASHUA, N.H.--Hillary Clinton and John McCain won Tuesday's New Hampshire primaries the old-fashioned way: trekking to scores of coffee houses, diners, and high school gymnasiums. They shook hands, answered questions, and eventually convinced a plurality of voters.
This was politicking at its most traditional, employing venerable tactics like McCain's Straight Talk Express bus tour and Clinton's "Time to Pick a President" meetings with voters. By the time the polls closed, it was a rare Granite State resident who managed to avoid in-person contact with a would-be president or a pushy surrogate.
In other words, it was anything but high-tech. Sure, there were robo-calls and e-mail alerts, but, for the most part, the local events that convinced voters to pick Clinton and McCain could have been convened at any point in the last century.
One example: the day after losing in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton asked supporters to meet her at a hangar at the airport here in the frosty pre-dawn gloom. It was a miserable day not only for campaign aides but also for locals, with temperatures at the event hovering around minus 6 degrees Fahrenheit. The Democratic senator showed up, responded to questions, and departed in a coach emblazoned with "BIG CHALLENGES, REAL SOLUTIONS, TIME TO PICK A PRESIDENT" in bold letters.
Supporters of Hillary Clinton prepare for her victory speech that took place later this evening in a gymnasium in Manchester, N.H.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com)Another example: employees of defense contractor BAE Systems crowded into a small auditorium to hear McCain speak, and, when that filled up, crowded into the main lobby to watch his remarks on a screen. The Republican senator spoke for half an hour, and, when the event was over, the workers waited patiently for the chance to shake McCain's hand or glimpse his campaign bus on the way out.
New Hampshire residents love it. More precisely, they claim to be annoyed by candidates and journalists interrupting their meals at diners and parking on their lawns when nearby events fill up, but they savor their chance to influence a presidential election and they take this role seriously.
Not only did Clinton's and McCain's tiresome, repetitive, voice-hoarsening efforts work, they nicely put into perspective the clamor that has arisen over social networks and other Internet popularity contests.
Neither of those candidates was a favorite online. Barack Obama, who came in second in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, has 219,707 MySpace "friends" to Clinton's 160,414. Obama and John Edwards each had more viewers on YouTube than Clinton did. Obama had around four times the number of "Eventful" demands for a visit than Clinton did and more than three times the Facebook friends.
And by any Internet metric, Texas Rep. Ron Paul should have captured the lion's share of the GOP vote in New Hampshire. He's arguably the Internet's favorite candidate, with Google engineers campaigning for him here, a remarkable lead on Eventful and Facebook, and 111,757 MySpace "friends" to McCain's mere 40,770.
Instead, Paul received just 8 percent of the vote (which is somewhat surprising after a weekend poll put him at 14 percent).
The reason for this, of course, is that Paul and Obama supporters tend to be young and tech savvy, which gives them disproportionate representation online. They flood online polls. They feverishly add their preferred candidate to their social networks. They organize, and raise funds, incredibly well.
John Edwards may not be the Internet's favorite candidate, but a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H. proves he's adept at kissing babies.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com )There's nothing wrong with that. But in presidential elections, votes matter, and those in Iowa and New Hampshire matter the most. Exercises in online nose-counting like press releases heralding the so-called "MySpace primary" don't.
To be sure, online politicking has been part of the 2008 election. The YouTube debates proved to be a provocative exercise in user-generated content, Meetup and MoveOn changed the way activism works, and e-mail lets campaigns stay in touch with voters and volunteers. As Paul devotees know, online fundraising is a powerful tool.
Journalists love these metrics (see above for the obligatory MySpace statistics) because they're easy to measure and report. But Tuesday's results should be a cautionary tale: votes matter. In-person meetings matter. Handshakes matter. MySpace friends don't.
CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
of the voters will not be so easy in the larger States.
I'm pretty sure Romney outspent all other candidates on advertising in both NH and Iowa yet he failed to win either. One of the commentaries on PBS last night was that media endorsements AND media advertising had NO impact on the polling, with one exception - the Huckabee ad with Chuck Norris, which saw a slight increase, but only for a week or so. I'm not too worried about media influence, especially since people who watch the partisan media are already, well, partisan and would vote a certain way in any event. I'm sure Huckabee isn't counting on votes from Air America listeners (is that even still up?) and Obama isn't going to be getting the vote of Foxnewz viewers.
Answer: its rigged, they will tell you who won, and how will you know any different? Did you count the votes? We are no longer in control of our gov, not sure that we ever were. We need to update our voting system for the new century. The only reason we have the electoral college system was the logistical difficulties in massive nation wide voting of the past. With a proper secured electronic voting system, where you store your vote uniquely and anonomously on local storage (a voter memory card, etc) as well as online uniquely and anonomously, to validate no tampering occurs with your vote, we could have a system we could trust. Distribute the anonymous voter memory cards (picked at random from a bin), through gov offices, DMV, etc, by showing valid registered voter ID. Only with a validating anonymous system, can we trust any electronic voting system, otherwise it is just to easy for them to cheat (just like the last time).
Until then our 'democracy' and 'elections' will continue to be controlled by those with enough money or influence to control the media coverage and spin.
They control our system by limiting choices, and dividing people along those limited perspectives. These are the same types that imply if you are against the war, you are not supporting our troops. If you don't like the president, you are a terrorist. If you question the administartion's propoganda, or provide evidence contrary to it, you could be held without charge as an enemy of the state. So, If there is a truly honest canidate that will fight for the people, you can be fairly certain we will not get a chance to vote for them when the time comes. If we do, they will still tell us who they are putting in the office, and how will you be able to argue it? Gore had all the evidence to prove he did win the election last time, or at least florida, and evidence of tampering so why didn't he? Answer: He was not in control of the media, and the media was not free to report the truth.
There is an obvious alternative explanation for the difference: the VOTERS OF NH are different. Each state will deviate from the national "polls" because each state has different demographics. Obviously we know that CA will pick a liberal democrat for president REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE NATIONAL POLLS PREDICT. So no, there are plenty of reasons why a state would reach a different result than the nationwide poll.
Speaking of which, there is an enormous difference between polls and actual voting. Even well-done polls will have error rates of 3-5%, at least. Just think how a poll actually occurs - people are called up and asked how they intend to vote. There's absolutely NO guarantee that the people who tell the surveyor that they'll vote a certain way, will actually carry through. See the election between Truman and Dewey:
http://www.kennesaw.edu/pols/3380/pres/1948.html
Lastly, Internet Polls are USELESS and have NO significance other than amusement. There's no control of the survey sample and fraud is not only likely, but entirely prevalent. See an article from the National Science Foundation: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/survey/index.jsp?id=trust
Your other comments lead me to question if you realize what the electoral college is and its relevance to primaries (hint:ZERO).
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Now you know why Mitt's numbers are so high, his Mormon cult followers will do ANYTHING to put him in the White House so he can turn around and enrich the Mormon Church with tax dollars.
Who are you gona trust with your childrens future? Any one of these other cantidates have a solid track record of voting with the people's rights according to the U.S. Constitution, no a one. One even refuses to salute the American Flag and will swear on a Koran.
As for the idiot that blasted Giuliani's placement, if you followed any political commentary you would know that Giuliani barely touched down in Iowa or New Hampshire. He is focusing right now on Florida and Michigan and very well may win both states, much to my chagrin as a supporter of another GOP candidate.
Well at least he isn't a Mormon.
In the past week, we were deluged with junk mail fliers, e-mail ads, and phone calls. Saturday alone I counted over 25 political phone calls to my house, and that doesn't count the dozen or so ones that hung up as soon as the answering machine came on.
I'm a barely registered Republican, although my actual voting habits are more Independent. I evaluated all the candidates several times over the past couple of months and arrived at the conclusion that Ron Paul would be the best person in the White House for the nation. Unfortunately, at this time he is not really electable; and there are several Republicans running that are not suitable to run this country. That being the case, I voted for McCain as being the second most suitable Republican in an effort to shut out the undesireables.
On the Democratic side, it will really come down to Obama and Clinton - Edwards might make a good VP running mate, but isn't going to be able to stir the nation like these other two. Clinton makes a good speech, but looking back at her performance in Washington, as well as historically, she is as much business as usual as the current occupants of the White House. Obama really is the only viable Democratic change candidate.
Here's a little history on Ms. Clinton from my experience. My apologies to the Dales if this causes some undesired attentions to be placed back on them. Ms Hillary claims to have extensive experience in how to run the presidency by virtue of her work behind the scenes during her husband's terms of office. That being the case, she was probably intimately involved, if not instrumental, in the events leading to the Travelgate scandal. For those who fail to remember, Travelgate was the situation where the administration basically attempted to frame Billy Dale, the then manager of the White House Travel Office, in order to justify their firing him from his civil service position, converting that position into a contracted job and giving it to the cronies of the Clintons. What happened then was the administration put Mr Dale, and his extended family, through hell on earth for a couple of years, and eventually had to drop their case due to absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing. So I'm not too keen on Ms. Clinton's honesty because of that. Now Ms. Clinton claims to be concerned about the healthcare situation in this nation. But it seems to me that that's a bit of crocodile tears; as the stress of the Travelgate investigation probably caused Mrs. Blanche Dale, wife of Billy, to suffer a stroke from which she never fully recovered.
What this means is that Hillary is the penultimate politician. As I see it, as long as she's going where you want her to, you have a wonderfully aggressive fighter working for you. But the minute you are no longer of use to her, or you get in her way, you'll find you're riding a tiger that's likely to turn and devour you. At least Obama doesn't have a track record of kneecapping his opponents.
In the future , if you get one, vote your mind. The rest of us don't need you to "help" us make sure the right person gets into office. Awfully arrogant of you to assume the rest of us are incapable of voting for ourselves. As if your vote for Mc Cain (the sell out) is supposed to endear you to us as selfless. It only proves to me that you are spineless.
RON PAUL in 08
Live Free Or Die
Remember it on election day
- Polls
- by sabot96 January 12, 2008 1:46 PM PST
- The scientific polls are done over the phone with a random sample. This type of polling should favor the older voters because they are the ones that still use phones. Many of the younger voters, like my self, are cell phone only. There is no explanation for the huge variations in the polls for Paul and Obama other than voter fraud.
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