Two days after Hillary Clinton's stunning comeback victory in New Hampshire, the imbroglio over the pollsters' dismal performance continues unabated. But while the speculation centers on the potential impact of latent racism or a feminist backlash among New Hampshire Democrats, the exit polls suggest a more simple explanation. In a nutshell, Hillary's voters originally made up their minds a long time ago, and on Election Day, they came home.

A quick round up of reactions to the Granite State polling fiasco shows pollsters and pundits desperate to explain how they got New Hampshire so utterly wrong. John Zogby, whose final poll showed Barack Obama with a 13% margin over Clinton, theorized that the compressed timeframe between Iowa and New Hampshire help explain the volatility in the final 48 hours. MSNBC's Chris Matthews attributed the shocking Clinton win to a "different kind of prejudice in the North" that led New Englanders to lie to pollsters. Pew's Andrew Kohut among others cited the Bradley/Dinkins effect whereby "poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites." Such voters also happen to have " more unfavorable views of blacks", it is claimed, and in New Hampshire, they voted for Hillary Clinton. And the blogosphere wouldn't be the blogosphere without conspiracy theories positing polling place fraud.
A quick glance at the exit poll data, however, suggests that contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hillary Clinton in essence won the New Hampshire primary weeks ago. With a huge lead over Obama (48% to 31%) among the 34% of New Hampshire voters who made their choice over a month ago, Clinton won the primary when those perhaps wavering voters came home in the end.
Table 2 below excerpted from the MSNBC exit poll shows when Democratic voters made up their minds. Contrary to most explanation (and as Kohut noted in the New York Times), Hillary Clinton only enjoyed a three point margin (39% to 36%) over Obama among the 17% voters who decided on their pick on the final day. While Obama had an edge among those who decided in the previous three days (37% to 34%), in the previous week (43% to 28%) and in the last month (44% to 34%), Hillary Clinton dominated 48% to 31% among voters who made up their minds before that. According to the exit poll, that last group made up a third of New Hampshire Democratic voters and they gave Hillary Clinton her victory.