Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 2008 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2009-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

MARC AMBINDER: David, as the primary period progressed, before the Iowa caucuses, who were the Clinton supporters who switched? Was there an issue profile of Clinton supporters who switched to Obama?

DAVID PLOUFFE: In most states, with the exception of Iowa—although our initial survey had Senator Clinton ten or twelve points ahead of us in Iowa—she was in the mid-forties to 50 percent. I don’t think any of us quite understand exactly what happened in New Hampshire. Like in Iowa, Edwards fell down to the high teens and then climbed back to 30 percent—almost all of those people that he got back to 30 percent with had been with him at some point. In New Hampshire, Senator Clinton is in the mid-forties in the very beginning and then falls down. So those people still liked her—they had been for her at some point, so they are easier to get back. In almost every state that concerned us, as her numbers dropped, most of those people still had high favorable ratings of her and they had been for her at some point, so we watched that very carefully. We had open eyes and great appreciation for their strength in the race and knew that we had a very narrow path. It was a change election clearly. She was running as the inevitable insider. Particularly in Iowa, and in New Hampshire to some extent, that did not resonate terribly well. It gave us an opening. Secondly, we thought we might be able to sneak by her in Iowa. For us, our strategy was we had to finish ahead of her in Iowa. In the very beginning, that might have meant coming in second to Edwards, but it increasingly became clearer that we would have to win. We thought we had to win the New Hampshire primary to be the Democratic nominee because her strength later in the calendar was so pronounced. We felt we had to have a terrific January. That was one of the surprises—looking back on it. We lost two of the first four states and we were still able to be the nominee. That happened for a couple of reasons. One, in the very beginning, we assumed we would only have the organizational and financial ability to transact the first four states. We would have to run the table there and try and catch lightning in a bottle.

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