Patrick Ruffini chides the chattering class...

I think Patrick Ruffini touches on part of a very important point here, something that I've been thinking about during this election season: measuring the mood of the electorate is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of burgeoning technology and the volume of inside baseball chatter in the MSM and blogosphere. Conventional polling only reaches households with land lines, which is an increasingly small (and demographically skewed) set of potential voters (this deserves more attention than I'd like to devote here, stay tuned). These polls are the basis for much of the heavy-handed prognostication bandied about in the media, shaping the horse race coverage and instilling in many voters, I believe, a sense of who "has a chance" (because who really wants to throw their vote away on a long-shot?). While all this flawed information is being talked about and raked over endlessly in the media, and pundits are gauging a candidate's chances by the amount of buzz they generate on cable news and the blogosphere, another significant segment of the population is making up their minds about who to vote for -- without noticing or being noticed by the chattering class.

Townhall.com::Blog: "Huckabee won women 40-26% (and men just 29-26%). He won voters under $30,000 by about 2 to 1. Cross those two, take away the Republican filter, and you’re talking about a general election constituency that is at least 2-to-1 Democratic. These are not people that conventional primary campaigns are designed to reach. These are the Republican voters the furthest away from National Review, other elite conservative media, and websites like this one. It’s easy to see just how the analysts missed the boat on this one."