The polls building up to New Hampshire showed a building Obama tide, with some showing him building to a double digit lead. But did those polls end up hurting Obama tonight?
New Hampshire allows independents to vote in either party's primary. The polls were starting to show Obama opening up a larger and larger lead on Hillary. At the same time, the last polls started showing McCain's lead over Romney narrowing. While I don't understand how an independent voter could give equal consideration to Obama and McCain, is it not possible that a number of independents looked at the polls and said "Oh Obama is going to win big and McCain looks like he is in trouble, I might as well vote for McCain." If the closeness of the Democratic race continues, I think we should look at the turn out of independents and how they split between the parties. If Obama loses to Hillary by a narrow margin, it could well turn out that the polls showing him with an increasing lead might have cost him at the polls that really counted.