Well, it appears to be happening again – an inexplicable swing to Clinton, the upstart stopped in his tracks. I learned in 2004 that we no longer knew how to do exit polls, which gave Kerry 57% of the New Hampshire vote (he officially ended up with 50.2%, barely squeaking it out). Now it appears as though the polling organizations have lost their craft – all eight of them above gave the New Hampshire primary to Obama by mostly huge margins. All eight uniformly got it wrong. (Oddly, they got it right for all the other candidates except Obama and Clinton.
Keep in mind that the above polls are pre-election samples, and not exit polls, which tend to be far more accurate. However, it appears as though there was a last minute inexplicable swing to Clinton, saving her ass. She will probably win the nomination. It appears she’s annointed.
Then there’s this small problem – New Hampshire uses Diebold optical scanning machines to count the paper ballots. This is the same machine that was so easily hacked in HBO’s movie, Hacking Democracy. The machines are under control of a private company, LHS Associates, which has exclusive control of the memory cards, start to finish. There is no interference in its control, no government oversight. And New Hampshire has done nothing, nothing, since the weaknesses of the Deibold machines were exposed, to remedy the problem. Nothing.
I doubt the Clinton campaign had anything to do with this travesty, if indeed we’ve been hacked again. She’s simply the establishment candidate, the easiest one to beat, the one who threatens conservatives least.
There’ll be more, I’m sure. Obama did what Democrats do best, gave up and went to bed. Everyone is scurrying around trying to explain the shift (*early results from exit polls show no swing to Clinton), no one is questioning the count.
I’m used to it. But can’t y’all be just a little bit suspicious? Just a little bit?
PS: For more, including updates throughout the night, check out The Brad Blog.
PPS: 25% of New Hampshire’s votes are hand counted, no machines used. It will be interesting to see the results in those precincts.
*PPPS: This official explanation, as I now hear it, is a swing of women voters to Clinton fueled by her crying spate. This would be plausible if supported by data. It’s not. It’s pulled out of the ether.
Piece of Mindful 
Official explanation from whom, Mark? Link please?
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By official, I mean the one most often cited by experts and pundits, and Jay Stevens. You can do your own links.
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Pulled out of the ether? The theory that some undecided voters swung to Clinton because of the level of attacks (by the media) in the week before the election makes a lot more sense than unfounded claims that some mysterious agent “of the establishment” changed the results, doesn’t it?
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Except, Don, that there’s nothing in the polling, pre-election or exit, to back that claim. It’s made up, it sounds nice, so people buy into it. Pulled out of the ether.
There’s nothing mysterious about LHS Systems, either. They are a private company that has complete control over the election. Their results are not audited. It’s absurd! That exit polls showed no swing, along with a massive collective failure by all the pollsters, gives my theory a little more leg than yours.
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