Exit Polls Show Women Delivered Clinton's Victory

Women came to Hillary Clinton's rescue in New Hampshire, turning out in record numbers to vote in the Democratic primary and helping her win a narrow victory over Barack Obama.

In contrast to Iowa last week - where Obama actually captured a larger share of female caucus goers - Clinton turned the tables yesterday, analysis of exit polls shows.

She won 46% of women's votes in New Hampshire, while Obama received just 34%. But what propelled her to victory was the huge female turnout, with women making up 57% of the Democratic party electorate.

In particular there was an unusually high voting by women aged over 40, a category that Clinton won by a substantial margin. Pundits speculated that Clinton's well-publicized emotional moment on Monday had aided her by provoking public sympathy. But others said her more effective personal campaigning style in New Hampshire was the reason.

Obama was backed by male voters by 40% to 29%, but since fewer men voted he received less support from them than women gave to Clinton.

As fewer than 8,000 votes separated the two contenders, the difference in the proportion of women voters crucially tipped the balance in Clinton's favor.

But there was plenty of other good news for the Clinton campaign. After the Iowa caucuses, where Obama's supporters dominated most categories, yesterday Clinton out polled him among Democratic voters, among those earning $50,000 (£25,000) or less and among union members - in other words, the traditional Democratic party base.

Obama's support came from the young - he was very heavily backed by the 18 to 24 age group - and voters who had attended university. He also outpolled Clinton among independent voters, but they did not have the influence that they did in Iowa.

One explanation is that some independent voters saw the large margins of victory forecast for Obama and chose instead to vote in the Republican primary to support John McCain, an old favorite who was in a seemingly tighter race.

The exit polls, though, do not explain the mystery of how the opinion polls right up to election day got the result so wrong. Even the Clinton campaign confessed after the result was announced that its own private polling showed Obama winning by 11 percentage points, while Obama's campaign had internal polls that showed a 14 point margin between the pair.

Only 17% of voters made up their mind on the day of the election, and they split fairly equally between the two candidates.

That raised fears that Obama had suffered from concealed racism through what pollsters nickname "the Bradley effect", a reference to the black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, who lost an election for governor of California in 1982 despite having commanding opinion poll leads with white voters beforehand.

According to this theory, when faced with a black candidate, voters tell pollsters one thing and then do another in the privacy of the voting booth. In Iowa, where the caucuses mean voting is done in open sight, the Bradley effect could not take place.

What did certainly help Clinton, it appears, is a mini-collapse in the support for John Edwards, who was expected to poll around 20% or above but ended up with just 17%. Based on Edwards' support in Iowa, his older, more conservative voters were more likely to shift to Clinton than to Obama.

Clinton also benefited from the absence of Joe Biden, the veteran senator from Delaware, who pulled out of the presidential race after a poor showing in Iowa. There he had taken 12% of voters who favored candidates with experience, and they seem to have largely moved over to Clinton.

Curiously, a higher proportion of New Hampshire voters thought that Obama was more likely to win the general election in November than Clinton, itself a reversal of previous trends.

But evidence of Obama's broad appeal could be seen in the religious observance of his supporters. While those who said they attended religious services infrequently voted for Clinton, Obama received most support from those who attended once a week - and from those who did not attend any services.