Ray Malone's Commentary

As I watched the election returns come in for the New Hampshire Primary Election last night several things seemed clear to me. Certainly the polls were drastically wrong and the Exit polls were wrong as far as the Democrat results were concerned.

Notice Fox called what turned out to be a 5 percent race between McCain and Romney just minutes after the polls closed. Why? Look at how they do it. First they had media people doing the exit polls. One of the babes on Fox said on the air that she would be exit polling. That was a big change from the 2000 exit polls conducted by Voters News Service. Voters News Service just ran want ads in the paper and hired the people who applied to do the actual exit polling. They gave them a days training and sent them out to poll.

But today each of the media companies apparently supplied some employees to do the actual exit polling. That means their was no way for political partisans to get in the act and mess with the results. So the Republican exit polling data and the actual returns from those exit polled precincts must have been in very close agreement. But the Democrat exit polls and the actual results from those precincts must not have agreed. Thus they dared not call it.

So why were the Democratic exit polls wrong? The reporters were still expecting an Obama victory, admittedly a small one well into the evening. Even after all the exit polling precincts had actual returns. I watched Brit Hume's surprise when AP called the election for Hillary.

So why was all the polling wrong. If we eliminate corruption of those conducting the exit polls then that leaves the voters not telling the exit pollsters the truth. My money is on people were lying to the pollsters.

So what happened. People must have voted for Hillary over Obama but told the pollsters they were going to and did vote for Obama. Why? Most voters in New Hampshire are over age 55. It is a state whose population is growing old. The Democratic voters were , I think, much influenced by the ground game of the Democratic party in New Hampshire. The Democratic party was for Hillary. The unions were for Hillary. The lower income and less educated people were for Hillary.

The richer and better educated, are about history about being for the first black to be president. But we know that voters especially Democrat voters ask their candidates "What will you have government do for me?" Obama spoke in generalities. He was for change... but never told anyone what kind of change. Hillary offered those voters Christmas packages of specific goodies.

What about the Republicans, I think that McCain got a lot of cross over votes. Again exit polls say differently but, they just asked the voters leaving the polls to fill out a form. Did the voters tell the truth. We have all listened to C-SPAN. Has anyone noticed that a lot of those that call on the Republican line tend to sound a lot like Democrats. Especially the ones that start out with "I voted for Bush in 2004." Republicans never think to tell anyone they voted for a Republican. That is a given. Just as honest men never think to tell you they decided are now telling l you the truth.

Think of McCain's line. He said he decided when he was way down in the polls to come to New Hampshire and tell the voters the truth. Did that mean that before his poll numbers dropped he had come to New Hampshire and lied to the voters?

No matter what those who were exit polled told the media, I think the Republican turn out was smaller than usual. Republicans may very well be discouraged and did not turn out. The true independents voted in the Republican primary. I also think the Democratic base came out in droves and voted for Hillary. We know that Hillary does well with the base and not with other voters.

So if she won it had to be a big turn out of the base. But like on C-SPAN a lot of the Democratic base said they were really independents. And I will bet you the exit pollsters did not take names.

On the other hand if Republican base did not turn out and a lot of those that went for McCain were independents that explains the Republican results. How else would we get exit polls saying they supported McCain as the most winnable Republican candidate. Any Republican who has spent any time actively involved with Republican politics knows that is not true.

Now a final point. Why does Obama do an imitation of Martin Luther King? The pundits tell us he is a sure thing to win the black votes. Even Jesse Jackson does not do an imitation of MLK. He does drop into his true black accent when addressing back audiences. I think it just may be that Blacks are not for Obama and he knows it.

How could that be? Look at the reaction to Bush appointing Colin Powell as secretary of state. The blacks saw him as an uncle tom. Obama doesn't really have black features and he talks like a white man. He looks like a white man with a very, very, very, deep tan. One thing about Obama's MKL imitation that struck my ear. Obama sounds like a white man trying to sound like MLK. If my ear can hear it, so can every black ear.

Obama was raised in Hawaii by white people He is half white. He moves like a white man, and he talks like a white man, and to many many blacks that instinctively screams UNCLE TOM.

I think the results of New Hampshire bode well for Hillary. I noted many pundits saying that they could not imaging blacks in South Carolina and other Southern states not coming out to vote for Obama. The way they said it made me think they had seen information that said blacks will not.

Did you notice the Black pundit on Fox was saying that Hillary would win the nomination? Yet he did not make a rebuttal to the point made by whites that a majority of Democrats in South Carolina are black and would surely vote for Obama. Yet he continued pour cold water on the view that Obama would win South Carolina. Why?

Could he have been thinking "UNCLE TOM"... but he dared not say it?

It will be interesting to see. We now know that whites over 40 prefer Hillary to Obama and that at least some blacks think Hillary will win the Southern black vote.

It will be interesting to see what takes place, but don't be surprised if the Obama bubble has already burst.. And it burst just hours after the Iowa caucus votes were counted... and no one told the media.