Winning and Spinning

I was looking at election returns at the NYTimes site and came across their media/entertainment blog. Suffice it to say, it's given me a new appreciation for how much more I like this one (precisely for insightful commentary like the above post, in lieu of glossy fluff pieces).

Anyway, it really was an interesting night. If Obama had pulled California (or even made it seem fairly close, which it might after all the returns), then I'd say he's the one who pulled into frontrunner. As is, it really does seem open and likely to enter a situation where the voters won't be choosing the candidate, party officials will.

I don't watch the news channels, but I wonder how much they've commented/speculated about the effect of John Edwards dropping out after a significant number of people had already voted early (at least where I'm from, in Tennessee). Perils of efficiency/convenience, I suppose.

Its a similar problem that happened with the exit polls in 2004. Polls are dependent on people wanting to talk to the pollsters. Supporters of the underdog who are very energized about their candidate want to talk more. This skews the poll.

Obama's campaign has a lot more energy behind it. The people supporting him are a lot more excited about him. Partly because he's the underdog and partly because he more significantly represents change. In general Obama's campaign really feels like its just getting ramped up, whereas Clinton feels like she's fighting to hold onto a once dominating lead.

I think most pundits are cautious about singing the triumphs of Hillary because they realize its far from over. Hillary has won all the big states she was a lock for now already: California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts. She's cashed in her big cards and Obama is still going strong. It's not a question of pretending that he may still have a chance, he does still have a pretty significant chance of winning the nomination.

What's crazy is that if Michigan and Florida hadn't lost their delegates she would have a bigger lead right now and would have had a better shot at stopping Obama's momentum.

I think Fox is just obsessed with Hillary because it is run by conservatives. Conservatives are obsessed with Hillary because they think they have the best chance of beating her.

I watch Fox and I don't think it is obsessed with Hillary. They are much more fair to her than, say, MSNBC. In any case, Hillary has asked to debate Obama this Monday on Fox. No word yet from the Obama camp. I guess now that John Edwards is out of the race, it is safe for Dems to appear on Fox again.

...Obama winning bigger margins than he actually did. (And winning states, like New Jersey, that had been expected to go to Clinton.)

James--Clinton won NJ, not Obama.

Re media treatment of Hillary: I didn't watch any of Fox, but the obvious preference for Obama on MSNBC continues.

@ Bemused: My sentence may not parse well, but I'm saying that yesterday's *exit polls* showed Obama winning NJ. Which then very likely influenced coverage when he failed to win the state, though he had generally been expected to lose it before the exits came out.

Make sense? In other words, we have this situation now where the narrative of election night is driven by the candidates' ability to match their performance *in the exit polls*. Which is a bigger deal even in a primary than in a general election. In 2004, the exits may have screwed up, but the results were the results, and it didn't change anything going forward because the election was over.

One could argue that in 2000, the screwy exit polls in Florida DID influence the recount narrative.

So in other words, election coverage has now become... stock reporting, where the important thing is not performance per se but performance vs the expected result - the rub, of course, being that "expected" is a combination of trends, estimation, and black voodoo?

Just like stocks, I think that the answer is less information - a ban on exit polling (or at least the reporting thereof) and a wait for official next day results. Good luck getting that to happen nowadays though.

(Pardon my grumpiness, I was hoping that last night would result in a clear nomination for at least one party. Instead I'll have to sit through the weird sensation of my Wisconsin's primaries actually mattering for something, and a (albeit brief) barrage of TV ads and robocalls. Even if the outcome is essentially already known: a standard midwestern Dem split of ~55/45 for Obama and a not quite standard midwestern Rep plurality (but not majority) for McCain.)

@Tom: In a way, what we have now is even weirder. It's like

* analysts expect you to report earnings of 25 cents a share for the previous quarter this afternoon.

* your earnings are in fact 25 cents a share, in line with estimates

* but somebody eavesdropping in your office mishears it as 29 cents a share, and leaks this erroneous information to message boards

* once you formally report earnings at 25 cents a share, it is considered a disappointment compared to the 29 cents that the eavesdropping guy thought he heard

* your stock drops

Something like that. This is why I am not a business writer.