Patrick Derocher: The Ephemera of Politics — On Polling and Primaries

Fulfilling something of a dream of mine, I had the opportunity to spend the week leading up to this year’s New Hampshire presidential primary on the ground in New Hampshire and as such, The RP asked me to do a write-up of what the election looked like from the Granite State (though that may have also had something to do with the fact that I missed several blog entries whilst traipsing about New Hampshire).

In the interest of full disclosure, and to more fully explain where I’m coming from here, I spent my time working for former Utah governor Jon Huntsman’s campaign, in a position that is best described as full time volunteer, and so this piece will include some observations specific to that campaign. Given my position (I wasn’t even considered staff), the extent to which I can comment on Jon 2012 is rather limited, as is the extent to which I feel it is my place to comment on specifics. That said, there are a few questions I have been asked on multiple occasions that I will start off by talking about.

–       Why did Huntsman never really catch on with voters? The simple fact of the matter is that most voters did not view Governor Huntsman as a conservative. This is, of course, more than a bit absurd (you can start and finish with his implementation of a flat tax, but there’s so much more). Perhaps it was the often fawning media coverage, or his moderate temperament and willingness to work across party lines, but the basic problem remains the same: The “moderate” label was affixed, and there was no changing many voters’ minds. As for why Huntsman appeared to have limited support among independents, that is more pertinent to the body of this piece and will be discussed shortly.

–       Why the Romney endorsement? To be blunt, I cannot really answer this any better than anyone who has simply been paying close attention to the race. Governor Romney is more closely aligned with Huntsman in terms of ideology and seriousness than any of the other remaining candidates, and the only one with a solid shot at winning the general election. Moreover, it cannot hurt to back the strongest contender for the nomination (though decided not as inevitable as a couple of weeks ago).

–       Did you get to meet his daughters? It’s a bit silly, perhaps, but who really cares? At any rate, I got a chance to meet the Jon 2012 Girls in passing on a couple of occasions (that is, not to the point where they would know who I am), but can safely say that they appear every bit as lovely and funny as on Twitter and TV, which I like to think of as a good reflection of the campaign’s authenticity (which was in turn exemplified by the dirty SUV in which Huntsman rode around).

If anyone has any questions about the campaign not answered in this article, please feel free to shoot me an email. I can’t be sure that I’ll be able to answer your question, but I’ll certainly try. Before moving on to actual analysis I do just want to say one thing: I am extraordinarily proud to have been part of Jon Huntsman’s campaign for president, even if my role was small and even if the campaign was shorter than it should have been. He is an honorable man who ran an honorable campaign, and put forth a set of ideals and solutions with which I am honored to have been associated. Now, on to the rest of the article.

It is probably beyond cliché to note that polling is often not terribly informative or accurate, but that does not mean it shouldn’t be said. Pollsters, on the whole, try to do the best they can to present an accurate picture of public opinion, but any number of factors, from the time of day to the self-selection of respondents to pure chance. Moreover, it is at times highly difficult to poll based on the small but important events on which elections are turned, especially if they occur at the last minute and in smaller elections.

Take, for example, New Hampshire in 2008. The last polls were being conducted a few days before the election, and then-Senator Obama was leading then-Senator Clinton by around 10 points. Then she cried. Clinton tearing up at an event in Portsmouth humanized her and got her coverage in a way that no debate or press release ever could, and no one could poll on it. Clinton wound up, of course, pulling off an upset win and extending the primary fight well into the spring of 2008. It would probably be too much of a stretch to ascribe Clinton’s win to this particular incident, but it certainly played a roll that no poll was able to measure.

Fast forward four years. Shortly before his come-from-behind win in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich received numerous plaudits for his stellar debate performances in the days leading up to that state’s primary election. He had been creeping up in polls, but the real momentum started building up as most polls were winding down. Unlike New Hampshire in 2008, however, there was one poll still going. The late dropouts by governors Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry meant that Public Policy Polling wound up turning what was supposed to be a standard poll into a miniature tracking poll over the last few days before the primary. And what did it show? Support was building for Gingrich as each day passed, largely as a result of his debate performances. We can say with some certainty, then, that Gingrich’s late-in-the-game prowess in debates played a major role in last Saturday’s upset.

This brings me back to New Hampshire. Two days before the primary, on January 8, Huntsman still hadn’t caught on. Conservatives had still not come around to the reality that he was one of them, and independents were, it appeared from the polling, leaning toward the candidates with higher media profiles– Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and, to a certain extent, Rick Santorum. Then came the Meet the Press debate and Huntsman’s now semi-famous retort to Mitt Romney about serving his country first. (Brag alert: I was in the theater for that debate.) This coincided with a series of polls showing Huntsman finally breaking through in the polls, and even creeping into second. The campaign had found, it seemed, its last minute ephemera.

The resurgence, of course, never happened. Rather, Representative Paul surged into an unexpectedly strong second place and the rest is history (all right, not quite yet). What happened? From being on the ground in New Hampshire, it seems like the Huntsman surge came either a day or two too late (Governor Huntsman would have benefited from an extra day or two working on the “Country First” message) or 12 hours too soon (Paul may have had some of his own ephemera, involving underlying concerns about Huntsman’s post-New Hampshire game plan).

The point is, we’ll never know. There are, even in an age of predictive and ever more accurate polling, some things that polls cannot ask about. Not all events can be tracked in surveys, not all opinions can be revealed. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. After all, what fun is politics without the occasional epic upset?