I read this over the weekend and thought very little of it. Apparently, Oprah has cut back on her appearances for Obama, because of the following.
A Gallup poll conducted in October, shortly after Ms. Winfrey announced her support of Mr. Obama, found that her "favorable" rating fell by 8 percentage points, to 66 percent, from 74 percent in January 2007; her "unfavorable" mark jumped by more than half, to 26 percent from 17 percent.
A savvy friend pointed out to me that this is not a good sign for Obama. Oprah's audience is heavily female, a group that Obama has struggled with. I'm not sure what this means; obviously lots of Republicans watch Oprah, so her endorsement of a Democrat is probably going to upset them. Obama has hung his hat on the notion that Republicans are going to vote for him, that he can persuade people to cross the aisle. Not all of them, of course, but some of them.
His unity and hope postpartisan stuff has some soft spots. I have no conclusions here, it's just an observation. Thoughts?
Here are some useful bits of quantitative information on 2008 floating around the Internet today:
New Predictive Model For Iowa's Impact On New Hampshire. Daily Kos Diarist Poblano has a new quantitative model out to predict the outcome of the New Hampshire primary. Looking at results from the past three decades, poblano concludes the following:
National Polls are completely meaningless in predicting the results of New Hampshire, once we know the results from Iowa. In fact, the coefficient on the national polling data is slightly negative, although not in any statistically significant way.
Poblano produces three models for New Hampshire, one showing Obama favored, one showing Clinton favored, and one showing a dead heat. Overall, across the three models, Clinton is (very) slightly favored, and Edwards is surprisingly close. Polano then produces some really interesting numbers:
Edwards must beat Clinton by 6 points in Iowa to become a favorite over Clinton in New Hampshire
Edwards must beat Obama by 4 points in Iowa to become a favorite over Obama in New Hampshire
Obama must beat Clinton by 3 points in Iowa to become a favorite over Clinton in New Hampshire
Some people argue that, because of the small sample size, models like these just tell us how past nomination campaigns went, not how future ones will go. I guess we will see. At the very least, I find numbers like these to be useful estimates.
Oprah could win South Carolina. In 2004, John Edwards won the South Carolina primary with 131,000 votes. John Kerry was second with 88,000 votes. Now, it looks like the Oprah-Obama rally in South Carolina will approach those numbers on its own:
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign announced Wednesday afternoon that because of overwhelming demand, their rally on Sunday with Oprah Winfrey will be moved to the 80,000 seat college football stadium in Columbia (although, the campaign said they don't expect to fill the stadium - that's coach Steve Spurrier's job).
Even if people are mainly turning out to see Oprah, this rally is turning into the best voter contact mechanism the Obama campaign could hope for in South Carolina. Directly speaking to, say, 60,000 people, as he is endorsed by one of their favorite media figures, is hard to top. More effective than any paid media campaign I could think of in the state. Imagine if Oprah cut out the middle-man and just ran herself!
Huckabee moves into first in Rasmussen national tracking poll. the Huckabee rise seems to be continuing unabated. According to Rasmussen, he now leads Giuliani nationally, 20%-17%. On the Democratic side, Clinton leads Obama 34%-24%, the closest result since April, with Edwards in third at 16%. Recent daily tracking numbers from Rasmussen can be seen here.
New Hampshire Polling Wave. Yesterday's wave of New Hampshire polls put the seven-poll, November 25th through today, average in the state at Clinton 33.6%, Obama 24.0%, Edwards 16.4%, Richardson 9.1%. Also, my suspicions of a faster Edwards increase were correct. Over the last three weeks, Obama has risen 0.8% in New Hampshire, while John Edwards has risen 3.1%. His rise is to such an extent that, in the even of an Edwards, Obama, Clinton 1-2-3 finish in Iowa, I would slightly favor John Edwards to win both New Hampshire and the overall nomination.
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