As I noted this morning the New Hampshire polls didn’t actually get the level of support for Barack Obama wrong. Instead, they undercounted Hillary Clinton’s supporters. How’d that happen? Jay Carney has friends of friends who have the answer:

He didn’t find any evidence that white respondents who were telling pollsters they planned to vote for Obama did not. What he found, instead, is that a certain percentage of Democratic voters in the last days of polling presumed Biden (especially) and (to a lesser degree) Dodd hadn’t dropped out. By and large, come election day, those Biden and Dodd supporters ended up casting ballots for Hillary. Also, of the 5 percent or so who were still undecideds in the last polls, almost all broke for Hillary. And a tiny percentage of Edwards supporters switched to Hillary.

When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Obama got 38 percent of the vote in Iowa. Not only is Iowa only one small state, but 38 percent of the vote is way less than half. Nevertheless, based on that plurality he was about to march to the nomination. As a result, while Obama continued to hold his own in terms of his baseline level of support, all the uncommitted people — supporters of minor candidates, undecideds, some soft Edwards people — voted for Clinton to keep the race going. In Iowa, a similar dynamic probably helped Obama. People knew that a Clinton win might end the competition, so Obama can, so to speak, the benefit of the doubt. Unlike most political bloggers, most voters haven’t been following this thing since the first quarter of 2007. A lot of them want to see how the competition plays out.

On CBS’s Face The Nation last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed Americans would not be “concerned” if the U.S. spends “10,000 years” in Iraq. Earlier in the week, he said it “would be fine with” him if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years” or even a “million years.” Despite his push for an indefinite presence in Iraq, McCain somehow had a “wide advantage” yesterday with New Hampshire Republicans who “disapproved of the war“:

Exit polls found 64 percent of Tuesday’s Republican voters still support the conflict — and Romney, whose criticism of Bush’s management of the war has been muted, led McCain among those voters. But among the 34 percent who said they disapproved of the war, McCain had a wide advantage over the GOP field — even over Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the sole advocate of a U.S. withdrawal in the Republican field.

In last night’s New Hampshire exit polls, voters “from both parties were asked about their church attendance and if they were Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Something else, or None.” But as the Faith in Public Life blog points out, “only Republicans were asked if they were born-again or evangelical Christian. Asking only Republicans about their religion shows that the media is still stuck on the outdated and false notion that evangelical Christians are the GOP’s political property.” (The same thing happened in Iowa.)

As you can see from this convenient map drawn from my short print article on foreclosures in the new issue of The Atlantic, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire is a place that’s bit especially hard-hit by the wave of foreclosures afflicting the country. Thus, a potentially huge political story hasn’t really gotten much political play with all the candidates focused on the early states and all the political press focused on the candidates.

That’s about the change. Clark County, Nevada comprising Las Vegas and its suburbs is one of the very hardest-hit places in the country, and Florida and California are full of badly afflicted counties. Since neither candidates has staked out a clear profile on this topic, it seems like a good opportunity for both of them to try to exploit.

The Hill reports that “friends and colleagues” of Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) are urging the congressman to retire at the end of his term. Doolittle is currently under federal investigation for his ties with fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff and contractor Brent Wilkes. Former Republican congressman Richard Pombo — “who lost his seat amid ethics allegations” — has reportedly called on his “longtime friend” Doolittle “to not seek reelection in the interest of keeping the district a GOP stronghold.”

On Monday, President Bush said the United States currently has “a resilient economy,” an attempt to counter growing fears of a coming recession. Similarly, on Tuesday, White House spokesperson Tony Fratto ignorantly proclaimed, “I don’t know of anyone predicting a recession.”

Yesterday on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson also downplayed talk of a recession, giving assurances that economic growth will continue. At the same time, however, he refused to directly deny whether there is a recession:

PAULSON: [T]he economic data is mixed. We’re watching this very closely. I said I think that we’re facing some strong headwinds, but the economy’s going to continue to grow. [...]

Q: So people who think we’re in a recession have it wrong? They’re not seeing the real picture right now?

PAULSON: I simply said that, we grew at five percent in the third quarter, almost five percent in the third quarter. Again, spending was strong, right up through the fall. There’s some concerns, There’s some [inaudible]. There’s some mixed economic data, and we’re watching it very closely right now.

Watch it:

But today, “Goldman Sachs became the latest Wall Street firm to predict that the U.S. economy will drop into recession this year.” As AmericaBlog observes, prior to taking his job in the Bush administration, Paulson was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. CNBC reports:

“Over the past few months, we have become increasingly concerned that the US housing and credit market downturn would trigger not just a growth slowdown and substantial Fed easing — our long-standing view — but also an outright recession,” Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients Wednesday. “The latest data suggest that recession has now arrived, or will very shortly.”

Merrill Lynch has also stated that “Friday’s employment report, which sent shares tumbling worldwide, confirmed that the US is in the first month of a recession.”

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