'Ticket' readers know their politics, at least the GOP's
Some time ago we warned about the dangers of using polls to forecast primary election outcomes. Still, on Monday Top of the Ticket gave our readers a chance to predict the outcome of the New Hampshire Republican and Democratic primary votes. Not who you wanted to win, but who you thought would win.
How did you do?
Well, we had a total of 28,379 votes cast in both party primaries. You got the Republican winner dead-on with 60% of you saying Sen. John McCain would win the GOP primary and about 16% picking former Gov. Mitt Romney to win; he actually came in second. But you (or at least those of you picking former Gov. Mike Huckabee) slipped up by a few decimal points, picking Rep. Ron Paul as your third choice to finish first at 9.6% instead of Huckabee at 9%.
Only 3.3% of you thought former Mayor Rudy Giuliani would win, meaning 96.7% of you were correct and we need to get some blog readers in Gotham; Giuliani didn't win. He vied with Paul all night for fourth or fifth place.
Now, as for the Democratic primary, oh, boy, did....
you blow it. Big-time.
Almost 80% of you thought Barack Obama would capture the New Hampshire win. He didn't, of course. He finished second behind Sen. Hillary Clinton. And only 12.8% of you predicted she would win. A major upset in Ticketland, as well as New Hampshire. (Yes, yes a lot of the media thought the same thing, hence the word "stunning" in so many headlines today about Clinton.)
Only 4.7% of you forecast John Edwards would win, meaning 95.3% of you were correct. He didn't. He got third place.
About 1.8% of you -- probably all three of our readers in Cleveland -- predicted Rep. Dennis Kucinich would win. That may be a larger percentage than among his family members. Kucinich actually finished last.
Ahead of him was Gov. Bill Richardson, who actually took fourth place, but in our poll came in last with 1% of the votes.
Maybe we'll try this again in upcoming states and see if you can do better. Comments welcome below.
--Andrew Malcolm
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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