Clinton's New Hampshire Victory Just Luck Of The Draw?

Forget Hillary's teary-turn mobilizing women or voters telling pollsters they support a minority candidate like Barack Obama but punch the ticket for another once in the privacy of a booth, the real reason for Clinton's victory was the letter Z, according to Stanford professor Jon Krosnick.

In elections past, the New Hampshire ballot would rotate candidate names from precinct to precinct. But this year they decided to have the names in the same alphabetically order in all precincts. The only random factor would be which letter they would start with. They drew a Z.

So Clinton was fourth, while Obama was mired near the bottom as the 18th name on the ballot (.pdf).

The significance?

"Our analysis of all recent primaries in New Hampshire showed that there was always a big primacy effect — big-name, big-vote-getting candidates got 3 percent or more votes more when listed first on the ballot than when listed last," writes Krosnick.

Add in the fact that most polling outfits rotate names when calling voters and that would help explain some of the discrepancies.

And if the names had been rotated on the ballot?

"The race would probably have been too close to call without a recount and might even have been an Obama victory."