Just a fluke...

I had big plans to write a post about the privilege of voting today in honor of New Hampshire but I didn't get to it. Then the results came in and I was not in the mood for doing anything, including finishing my laundry.

So, I'm sure some of you might be interested in my response to Hillary's victory in New Hampshire. I was pretty disappointed but not entirely surprised. Eva and I were watching a news story titled "The Obama Factor" on CBS last night and they probably spent 75% of the time talking about Hillary's boost in her NH campaign. Because she lost in Iowa, despite having been a favorite in this campaign for months, Hillary stepped up her campaigning and influenced a lot of people at the last minute. I'll probably include something about last minute campaigning tomorrow as well... Obama still did amazing in New Hampshire which I think the media has been kind of ignoring this evening. He only had 6000 fewer votes than Hillary which is not a lot in the scheme of the country. In addition, if NPR's cool interactive election map is correct, Obama and Hillary actually won the same number of delegates for the National Convention. In addition, only 22 delegates were at stack in NH while Iowa has 45 delegates. I'm not trying to completely discount Hillary's win since it is impressive that she received the most votes. The bottom line, however, is that Obama is still ahead in terms of number of delegates.

The other factor that I haven't really heard being considered is that after the next couple of small primaries, there will be more than one happening at a time and it will be impossible for the individual candidates to travel to the states in question and directly influence the voters as was done in Iowa and NH. The media will still be a source of "information" but I think a lot of Hillary's victory is due to some of her powerful speeches and press conferences in the last few days.

I started writing a lot more but then I realized I was segueing into the post I want to write tomorrow about voting in general. I guess we'll just treat this as a two-part post! I'd love to hear any comments any of you might have on this exciting election year so please feel free to post comments! Plus it makes me feel loved when people comment ;-)

So far I've found NPR the easiest site to navigate for primary and caucus results. I don't have cable so I can't watch all the live coverage on CNN etc. NPR has both stories and the raw numbers on their website so check out the link above. They have also designed the state by state results pages to have other major races such as governor, Congress, and Senate races when those happen.
The final word: Obama doesn't need to bounce back because he's doing a great job pushing ahead. One small loss won't necessarily mess up the whole nomination. I hope...