I am as guilty as anyone else in the media or blogosphere when it comes to New Hampshire. I assumed, like everyone assumed, because everyone assumed, helped others assume, that Barack Obama was going to run away with the win and because of that, we were witnessing the potential end of the Clinton campaign. What were we all thinking? (The same thing the Clinton campaign was, they though they would lose too!)

The truth is, polling often works and works well. There is almost no better way of finding out what people will do than asking them. However polling is not perfect, people lie, questions are asked in weird ways or at the wrong moments, but most importantly our “interpretations” of polling are often what get the nation into trouble, especially when everyone agrees on something without really looking into it.

So I will still continue to report polls. I will also try to look at them in every way imagineable. For instance on the even of the primary and in the week prior I noted many times that the polling of actual Democratic voters showed even results. The next logical step was to look at independents, which would make up a large percentage and add those to Obama. There you have polls showing Obama running away with it. What did it ignore though?

The analysis ignored the very large percentage of people who were undecided. Everyone assumed this would either break even or potentially favor Obama because of the massive hype. That was a wrong assumption, those voters went to Clinton, hence the win. By starting out with good numbers we all had the right idea. The problem is with the assumptions everyone made. From now on we cannot just assume we know how undecided voters will turn. We never should have and in a process in which the difference in candidates is only a few percentage points, heck even ten or more percentage points, if you have a large percentage of people who are likely to vote but aren’t sure who they are voting for, then you don’t have anything.

So the easiest way to rectify this? I won’t even begin to speculate on who will win. I did not speculate before Iowa and I am glad I didn’t. Just the facts is how I will go forth with this blog and in life. I might say “it seems likely that” someone will win but then also try and give the ways in which the argument can be shot down. When in doubt, I will shut my mouth.

Furthermore when I present polls, from this point on and forever, I will give you the undecided vote percentage. I am still seeing polls reported online and in the media as gospel, even after NH, and they are ignoring the undecided voters. Welcome back to the mess we were in.

Finally I am also going to write more about how things are being covered and the way in which things are being said. Media bias is becoming an important issue in this campaign, lets look at it, be honest about it and make sure that if it is happening, it is being looked at and considered when we make predictions or try and figure out what is happening in the race.

There are other things I will do and hopefully others will do too, but these are the most immediate and important I can think of.