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Is Obama the American Kinnock?

Posted on January 9, 2008
Filed Under Politics |

Back in 1992, every single political opinion poll was pointing to a Labour Victory in the UK general election. Neil Kinnock was going to be swept to power as Prime Minister, leaving John Major to be a footnote on the Thatcher years. History records it didn’t quite turn out that way. Once the population was in the sanctity of the ballot box, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to vote for Labour. Their little secret would be safe. When the exit polls asked them, sure they said they voted for the challenger, but that was words. What counts was where the ‘X’ was.

I think the same thing happened in New Hampshire last night and over the last weekend. Sure you could talk about mobilising a certain tranche of the voters, you can talk about events and media coverage (Clinton crying, Kinnock falling over on a beach…) but when it comes down to it, when people went in to vote they made their own minds up, punters be damned.

The Iowa Caucus was a very public affair - New Hampshire wasn’t. America may well be ready to say they could vote for an African American to be in the White House, but privately, given a choice with no come-back on their community standing, would they regard a female as the lesser of two evils?

(Especially looking to my US readers on this question).

Update: I’m reading a lot of US commentating wondering how the pollsters could be so wrong and WTF happened? Sounds like what Mori, Ipsos, et al went through in late 1992.

Comments

4 Responses to “Is Obama the American Kinnock?”

George on January 9th, 2008 11:51

Hi, Ewan!

It looks to me like New Hampshire residents voted not for a female, but for a specific candidate who happens to be a woman, and not so much against an African-American, but only slightly (3 percent) less for the specific candidate who happens to be black.

That asserted, gender clearly was in play, if the statistics in this Washington Post story (and the other numbers mentioned in this CBS News story) are trustworthy: “[…] In New Hampshire, exit polls showed that 57 percent of the electorate was female and that she won the group by 12 percentage points; she lost women in Iowa by five points. Clinton also picked up 28 percent of voters younger than 30, after getting only 11 percent of young caucusgoers in Iowa. In another big switch, Clinton got 28 percent of voters prioritizing ‘change,’ up 9 percentage points from Iowa. […]”
Ewan Spence on January 9th, 2008 12:49

George,

Thanks for the comment and more links to ink. I suspect a lot of statistics will come out over the next few days, and we all know what they say about statistics.

I do hope that the US population can look at everything dispassionately as you suggest here, because that’s the way it should happen. Having worked in polling organisations in a previous life though, I’m not so confident.
Paul H on January 9th, 2008 16:38

Thanks for choosing a light topic, Ewan.
I’ve pretty much stayed out of politics for the last 20 years.
Being out of Britain, UK elections were not of much interest to me.
Not being American (until now), US elections were none of my business.
Now I am a citizen, it is my right and my duty to be involved (or I can’t complain).
You are simultaneously touching on the issue of race and gender.
Judging from the media’s various polls and such (if we are to give them any credence), the country is divided on the issues at hand.
It would seem on age ranges more than anything else.
You are right to point out that polls and such mean nothing, it’s the vote that counts.
People behave differently when they can express themselves without being under public scrutiny.
I think, as ever, the choices to hand do not lead one to a firm conclusion as to which candidate to vote for.
I don’t think that the US, as a whole, is quite ready for a non-Caucasian president.
Has the UK had a non-Caucasian Prime Minister?
I know we had a female one, I admit to voting for her (twice).
I am not keen on voting for Hilary, I’d like to avoid this Bush/Clinton seesaw.
I haven’t made my mind up yet.
Our primary is not until April 22nd, so we pretty much have no say in who becomes the one running.
John ‘Oven Chips’ McCain is someone I have some respect for, but I need to examine him more closely.
Anyway, the pollsters can be so wrong because privately people behave differently than they do publicly. And America is getting there, but it still has a way to go. That’s my 2c-worth.
Cheers!
Britt Raybould on January 9th, 2008 17:57

I think part of it has to do with the difference between a caucus and a primary. A caucus becomes a very community, group-based effort versus the solitary confines of a voting booth. In groups, people can get caught up in the excitement of an Obama and overlook how little experience he truly has compared to the other candidates. You reach New Hampshire and there’s less group more individual with harder questions being asked about qualifications.

There’s also a lot of discussion around Hillary’s human moment the other day where she broke down a bit and the theory that it resonated with voters. As to your comment about pollsters getting it so wrong, I think some of it lies in the comfort of having a clear cut race.

Neither party has an obvious nominee yet, which increases the workload for the media and the pundits. They’ve gotten lazy in recent years as the elections where at least one candidate was a known quantity. I also suspect that some people followed your historical example and said one thing while doing another.

Personally, at this point, I think it’s less about gender and race and more about whether one wants another Clinton White House versus an optimistic, but inexperienced Obama. One’s semi-predictable, the other much less so, which makes life-long politicos in the establishment uncomfortable. Race and/or gender will be a bigger issue in the general election.