A Poll Credits Economy for Clinton's Win
Senator Clinton's victory in New Hampshire may have been driven in large part by her appeal to working-class, financially strapped voters, an advantage that could pose problems for Senator Obama of Illinois and be potentially fatal for the struggling, populist-themed candidacy of John Edwards.
While many pundits credited women for Mrs. Clinton's success in the Democratic primary Tuesday night, an exit poll indicated that the New York senator had an even larger margin of victory among the economically disaffected. Among voters who made $50,000 a year or less, she led Mr. Obama by 47% to 32%. Among those who said their families were falling behind financially, she led Mr. Obama by 43% to 33%. Among those with no college education, Mrs. Clinton led the Illinois senator by 48% to 30%.
"The most angry voters ended up going to Clinton," a prominent political analyst, Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report, said. "You have a lot of people who think Hillary Clinton is drawing the Wellesley, Radcliffe, Smith vote. I don't deny she does some of that, but on the basis of the New Hampshire numbers … it sure looked like she was getting downscale Democrats."
The flipside of the New Hampshire numbers is that Mr. Obama did well with upscale voters. Among those who said their families are getting ahead, he led Mrs. Clinton 48% to 31%. However, only 14 % of voters said they were advancing financially.
In a little-noticed remark on the morning she arrived in New Hampshire from Iowa, Mrs. Clinton noted that the Democratic race seemed to be breaking down along economic lines. "I'm well aware that New Hampshire, like America, has a lot of voters who don't think they need a president right now. They're doing fine. They're well educated. They're well off," she told a rally at the Nashua airport. "For them, this election isn't about, 'Me and my family.' It's about, you know, kind of like, 'How I feel and what I hope for.' And that's great. But there are more and more people in New Hampshire who need a president who will be your champion. And I intend to be a champion for working people and the middle class."
Mr. Rothenberg said changes between pre-election polls and the actual results suggested that low- and middle-income voters expected to align with Mr. Edwards were siding with Mrs. Clinton, rather than Mr. Obama. "You would have assumed the vote would go to the other 'change' candidate," the analyst said. "They didn't seem to do that."
The campaigns of Messrs. Obama and Edwards disputed the significance of the New Hampshire exit poll data.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama, Jennifer Psaki, noted that his win in Iowa cut across a wide array of demographic categories. "Iowa voters of all income brackets overwhelmingly supported Obama and his campaign to change this country," she said.
National polling data also shows a wealthier economic skew to Mr. Obama's base.
However, Ms. Psaki said endorsements such as those yesterday from culinary, service and hotel workers' unions would convey Mr. Obama's working-class appeal. The nearly all-white electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire also mean those contests give little insight into where working-class minority voters will ultimately come down.
A top adviser to Mr. Edwards, Joseph Trippi, said the New Hampshire exit poll, conducted for the television networks and the Associated Press, was so far off in predicting the outcome of that race that no conclusions should be drawn from its other findings. "We don't think the New Hampshire result says anything other than that they were not ready to shut the door on her and launch Barack into the nomination," the adviser told The New York Sun.
If Mrs. Clinton took votes from Mr. Edwards in New Hampshire, Mr. Trippi blamed press coverage that virtually ignored his candidate after Mr. Obama's Iowa upset. "Where we did think we had a fair chance at being heard, in Iowa, we beat her," he said. "We think our message works when it is heard."
Mr. Trippi said Mr. Edwards is giving no thought to dropping out. "We've had a second. We've had a third. We have the resources to continue," the aide said. "It's not going to be easy, but by no means is there no way to get there."
In her comments in Nashua, Mrs. Clinton seemed to argue that if a vote for Mr. Obama was rolling the dice, as her husband suggested, the wealthy had less to lose if an Obama nomination or presidency came up snake eyes. She made no explicit mention of race as she painted herself as a better bet, but others have noted that one of the feelings and hopes drawing voters to Mr. Obama is the prospect that he would be America's first black, or partly black, president.
"This is such an important event for America, for the American people," a retired military leader and African American who flirted with a presidential bid eight years ago, Colin Powell, said in an interview Monday. "We can show to the rest of the world that it's possible to have a Kenyan father, to be a black man, to have gone to school in Indonesia, come back, gotten your education in this great country and now you can put yourself forward for national office," Mr. Powell told Tavis Smiley on PBS. The ex-general later added that Mr. Obama should be seen "as a candidate for president who happens to be black, and not a black candidate."
