The Shocking and Unexpected New Hampshire Primary Victory for Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton stunned the entire nation on the night of January 8 when she was declared the winner of the New Hampshire primary. The day prior to the New Hampshire primary featured polls from every major polling operation including Gallup, Rasmusan, CNN and several others. Each poll had Senator Barack Obama beating Senator Hillary Clinton by at least 8 percentage points in the polls. The smallest margin of victory for Obama had him up by 1 point according to the Suffolk University poll in New Hampshire. Not a single poll had Hillary Clinton winning the Granite state. Obama was preparing his second victory speech and Hillary Clinton was on the verge of firing her entire staff. Political analysts and pundits were saying the Obama could run away with this election. But then primary night released the stunning results, declaring Hillary Clinton the winner. So what the heck happened?

Leading up to primary day, Barack Obama was extremely confident of victory. Perhaps he even overestimated Hillary Clinton. He had a lackluster performance in the Facebook debate which was televised the Saturday before the primary day. During the debate, Hillary Clinton attacked Obama for having a campaign coordinator be the lobbyist for the Fizer drug company and also attacked Obama's short Senate record including his votes for funding the War in Iraq and voting for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Hillary Clinton came out swinging in the debate and while all along it has been Obama's campaign strategy not to go negative on his rivals, he failed to respond to many of Hillary Clinton's attacks. Furthermore, it appeared that Hillary Clinton was finally able to convince the American public that the real difference between her and Obama is that she has the experience factor of "making change."

Over the weekend before the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton also spoke at a small gathering in which she talked about her campaigning experience and how hard it was, breaking down and crying during the speech. While some people say that Hillary's tears were fake, most people believed that they were genuine and showed the true Hillary Clinton. There was also a moment during the Facebook Debate in which she was asked about her likeability factor to which she replied "That hurts my feelings," setting off laughter in the entire audience. It was moments during the last 3 days in which Hillary Clinton really showed off her true personality and was able to get voters to actually begin to like her. According to MSNBC and CNN polls, most New Hampshire voters didn't decide on who they were voting for until the final 3 days before the New Hampshire primary. In these last 3 days, most of the undecided voters who were registered Democrats voted for Hillary Clinton based on her experience edge over Obama.

Another big reason was that in this primary, Hillary Clinton was able to receive a large number of women to vote for her. In the Iowa caucus, Obama actually had more women vote for him than did Hillary Clinton, In the New Hampshire primary; Clinton carried the women's vote for a large majority. Perhaps it was Hillary Clinton's tears which showed her emotional side and appealed to female voters.

In addition, the Clinton campaign has changed their campaign strategies which have greatly benefited the campaign. Instead of giving long speeches at her events, Hillary has been shortening her speeches and answering as many questions as possible that the voters have. By answering more questions at events, voters are able to ask her what's on their minds and better understand her positions on the issues. The Clinton campaign has also tried to appeal to more young voters, particularly young female voters. During Clinton's victory speech on January 8, her background contained many young female voters who support her campaign. Her speech in Iowa contained a background of old established Democrats like Wesley Clark and Madeline Albright. During this New Hampshire election, Hillary was able to win voters above the age of 40. In the Iowa caucus, Obama received more votes than her in the age 40 to 60 age gap.

Obama's staff will be taking a hard look at this past election and suffice to say, they won't be taking any polls too seriously anytime soon.