Huge Turn Around Time
Now that the AP and NBC have called it for Clinton, the press will probably try to tell us that Clinton has all the momentum going into Nevada, South Carolina and Florida. And they’re partially right, this is certainly a huge turn around from the ten or so percent that she was down going into today. Surely the CW on why this turn around happened is that women turned out in huge numbers for Clinton because her debate performance, her getting angry, taking questions, changing the stump speech and the crying moment. Remember that just earlier today, plenty were saying that Obama was inevitable. Political campaigns are weird
Olbermann just said that 38% of Democratic voters made up their mind today, which will just give more credence to Hillary hugely turning it around in the last few days. And Matthew just suggested that some people “weren’t being truthful” when talking to pollsters — perhaps he’s suggesting that, even for Obama, people are willing to tell pollsters they’ll vote for a black candidate, but then get cold feet in the voting booth. I’m not saying this happened, only that it’s interesting Matthew suggested it.
UPDATE Silly me, black candidates doing significantly worse in the election than they do in polls is called the Bradley Effect. I don’t think it happened, and I’d rather not think so, but this does look like a textbook Bradley moment.
UPDATE II Of course, I hadn’t actually looked at the exit polling data, and Yglesias is probably on to something when he says that because the bounce was largely among white women, instead of white women and white men, a Bradley/Wilder Effect seems unlikely
