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Don’t You Just Love It When The Polls Are Wrong?

Since Iowa, Poll Tracker has been reporting to you on the polls in New Hampshire and nationwide (as well as rankings of the reliability of the polls, and tips on how to interpret them). The preponderance of them pointed to a big Barack Obama surge, and an upswing for John McCain, although his race against Mitt Romney in New Hampshire was deemed to be closer.

Instead, as soon as the real polls closed, McCain was quickly declared a winner while the Obama-Clinton race looked close into the evening until she, too, was declared the winner.

And so, this will shake up once again the polls to come. In the national polls, look for the Clinton slide to start reversing itself. On the Republican side, USA Today/Gallup had Mike Huckabee on top at 25 percent, with a declining Rudy Giuliani at 20 percent and a rising McCain at 19 percent. Romney was way in back at 9 percent. Look for the Republican numbers to change.

It’s a moment to be savored when real life provides a surprise in this marketing age. And when we in the press get our come-uppance by getting on the bandwagon. So, stay tuned. The explanations about what went wrong in New Hampshire (for the pollsters, that is) will be rolling in Wednesday and we’ll post them here.

As the campaign rumbles towards the mega-Tuesday Feb .5 primary day, it will be particularly interesting to see what impact the New Hampshire results have on the polls in the next important state, South Carolina.

Of course, there’s a good chance they’ll be wrong.

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