Comments on: Who Were Those Clinton-McCain Crossover Voters?

[someclarity]

"52 percent said they would have backed the former Democratic candidate; 41 percent would have voted for McCain, wider than Obama%u2019s 7-point margin over McCain."

Following your logic: If Clinton was running against Mickey Mouse and got 51% to the mouse''s 20% she would be winning by a larger margin, too. So what? Is this news? Obama got 53% of the vote! His larger majority is more important.

[kc7999-2009]

This is not surprising at all, and an unfair "what if" question. Presumably, nearly every single Obama voter would guess that they would have voted for Hillary if Obama was no longer a choice. So only a tiny percentage of "swing" voters (McCain voters who wish they could have voted for Hillary), would increase the point spread. Why is this an unfair comparison? Because Hillary did not have to prove herself to the populace in a general election campaign. The political version of "absence makes the heart grow stronger".

[neonink]

I did vote for Clinton.

I know I basically threw away my vote, but I could not vote against a military hero and for a socialist with ties to Ayers.

and I could not vote for a war monger and against a democrat.

[delphisans]

While those statistics are interesting, they are misleading. This is people saying, "I would vote for Hillary Clinton, the non-candidate form, above Obama, the candidate form." It is not directly comparable. Many of these people may have had different opinions of Hillary after the additional campaign time. These are people who have not been watching attack ads coming from and directed at Hillary for the past six months.

Who knows how those opinions may have shifted had Hillary been engaged in six months more of campaigning, but to take this as some sort of untouchable truth that Hillary is a superior candidate is a very flawed conclusion. People like Lakrosse are assuming that the opinions of Hillary by voters at this point are exactly the same ones that they would have had if she had engaged in the general election campaign. What kind of gaffes may she have made? What missteps may she have made to turn some voters off? What new voters may she have pulled in that said they wouldn''t have supported her? It is far more complex that these simple exit polls seem to indicate.

[delphisans]

While those statistics are interesting, they are misleading. This is people saying, "I would vote for Hillary Clinton, the non-candidate form, above Obama, the candidate form." It is not directly comparable. Many of these people may have had different opinions of Hillary after the additional campaign time. These are people who have not been watching attack ads coming from and directed at Hillary for the past six months.

Who knows how those opinions may have shifted had Hillary been engaged in six months more of campaigning, but to take this as some sort of untouchable truth that Hillary is a superior candidate is a very flawed conclusion. People like Lakrosse are assuming that the opinions of Hillary by voters at this point are exactly the same ones that they would have had if she had engaged in the general election campaign. What kind of gaffes may she have made? What missteps may she have made to turn some voters off? What new voters may she have pulled in that said they wouldn''t have supported her? It is far more complex that these simple exit polls seem to indicate.

[jkeenan102]

This story is false. If Clinton won the Democratic nomination, blacks and hispanics would have been so incensed that they would have voted for McCain or stayed home thus allowing a McCain win.

[delphisans]

While those statistics are interesting, they are misleading. This is people saying, "I would vote for Hillary Clinton, the non-candidate form, above Obama, the candidate form." It is not directly comparable. Many of these people may have had different opinions of Hillary after the additional campaign time. These are people who have not been watching attack ads coming from and directed at Hillary for the past six months.

Who knows how those opinions may have shifted had Hillary been engaged in six months more of campaigning, but to take this as some sort of untouchable truth that Hillary is a superior candidate is a very flawed conclusion. People like Lakrosse are assuming that the opinions of Hillary by voters at this point are exactly the same ones that they would have had if she had engaged in the general election campaign. What kind of gaffes may she have made? What missteps may she have made to turn some voters off? What new voters may she have pulled in that said they wouldn''t have supported her? It is far more complex that these simple exit polls seem to indicate.

[glennmcgahee]

I am one of those voters. We are people who really beleive in the concept of 1 person-1vote and fair representation. The Caucus system and the awarding of delegates is really a mess. The DNC made sure that millions of voters who supported Clinton were disenfranchised. Forget Florida and Michigan? Florida''s primary date was moved so that we could have a better and more transparent voting procedure but we were punished for it. When Hillary Clinton wins 11 states but receives only 5 more delegates than the loser, something is wrong. When the few participants in Caucus'' count as much as millions of votes in Primaries, something is wrong. The candidate was chosen before the voting began by the party powers, therefore they owe our states a refund for the money we spent on these elections.

[panterazero]

We can expect the PUMAs and comparable crypto-populist libertarians to have a field day with this. As important as the election was -- since the affluent Democrats on the coasts can now breathe free at home and stop apologizing to their friends when they travel abroad -- what happens AFTERWARDS will be still more important. We need to replace ideologically driven business-as-business with truly proactive socioeconomic engineering on a scale not seen since FDR took over from Hoover. And another Clinton presidency, welcome as it might have been to those who misparse class as gender, wouldn''t have come close to exerting the necessary force.

[lakrosse]

this goes to show that Barack Hussein Obama clearly was not our strongest candidate. He only even took off after the economic crisis. Otherwise it was a close election again. Hillary was far ahead of both from the start. I still hate Hussein.