[UPDATED several times at end of article, and still developing with new updates...]

I'm not sure why Obama would have conceded so soon, given the virtually inexplicable turn of events in New Hampshire tonight.

What's going on here? Before proceeding, I recommend you read the third section of the post I just ran an hour or so ago, concerning the way the ballots are counted in New Hampshire, largely on Diebold optical-scan voting systems, wholly controlled and programmed by a very very bad company named LHS Associates.

Those Diebold op-scan machines are the exact same ones that were hacked in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy. See the previous report, as I recommend, which also includes a video of that hack, and footage of the guy who runs LHS Associates.

That said, the the pre-election pollster's numbers (NOTE: that's not Exit Polls, but Pre-Election Polls!) were dead-on, for the most part, on the Republican side, as well as on the Democratic side. Except in the do-or-die (for Hillary) Clinton v. Obama race. I'm watching MSNBC right now, and they all seem to agree that the results, for the moment, defy explanation.

I concur.

Here's a screenshot of a round up of all of the latest polls from RealClearPolitics.com tonight, and more, to get an idea of the serious concerns here...

They were all not just wrong, but wildly wrong. But only for the Clinton/Obama race.

For a closer look, here's Zogby's predicted numbers, for both the Republicans and Democrats:

And here are the latest numbers from the MSNBC website (the numbers seem to be identical over at CNN and elsewhere):

As you'll note, the numbers in Zogby's latest polls, for all but Clinton and Obama, seem to have been dead-on the money for both the Republicans and Democrats. Edwards, for example, was polled at 17% in Zogby's poll, and he received exactly 17% in the MSNBC numbers, with 63% of precincts reporting. So are we to believe that only those voters who preferred Obama previously, decided to change to Hillary at the last minute? I suppose so.

This election was regarded as do-or-die for Clinton, after most in the media had already written her off after her "thumpin'" in Iowa. But Tim Russert just agreed with Brokaw and Matthews that "this was the most stunning upset in the history of politics."

They are already grasping for reasons that this happened: the crying; she found her voice; the women turned out; oldline Dems showed up, etc. All reminiscent, if you ask me, of "the evangelicals who turned out at the very last minute to vote for Bush in 2004" as the Exit Poll apologists wrote in what would become conventional wisdom at the time. (Where did they get that info? The Exit Polls, they'll tell you. The same ones that they will also tell you were wildly wrong on every other count, apparently.)

Olbermann just called it "a titanic upset victory" for Clinton.

So, with another nod to the third section of the article I posted earlier here tonight, what's going on here?

While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company --- and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process.

I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire's precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. All the rest are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates. As Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who seems to share my concern, says, LHS is the "chain of custody" in New Hampshire elections.

Other folks that I've spoken to, who follow this sort of thing, share my concern at this hour. Harris noted that it will be interesting to compare numbers of the hand-counted precincts with those counted on the hackable Diebold op-scan systems.

If I was Barack Obama, I'd certainly not have conceded this election this quickly. I'm not quite sure what he was thinking. And as far as offering an indication of whether he understands how these systems work, and the necessity of making sure that votes are counted, and counted accurately, it does not offer a great deal of confidence at this hour.

I'm trying to get in touch with his campaign, to let them know of these concerns. I hope you'll feel free to let them know as well, if any of you happen to be in touch with them, or a part of the campaign. I will, of course, be happy to discuss these concerns with them if they wish to call.

As mentioned, the numbers referred to above are not Exit Polls. They are Pre-Election Polls which are far less reliable than Exit Polls. So, if anybody knows where any decent Exit Polling data is, we'd appreciate it if you linked it in comments below...

UPDATE 9:18pm PT: This AP report includes information, said to be based on data from the Exit Polls. It indicates that the independents in NH, who may vote in either the R or D primary, voted mostly D, and were breaking for Obama. AP claims, however, that the same data show that Clinton's strength with women "offset that"...

Note: the Exit Pollsters used here were Mitofsky/Edison, the same ones who ran the infamous Exits in 2004 showing that, in state after state, Kerry should have won. They also later said their own polling was completely wrong (which is disputed strongly by statistics experts such as U. of Pennsylvania Prof. Steven F. Freeman Ph.D.) So, it's lovely that AP and the TV nets hired them again...

UPDATE 9:40pm PT: While the talking heads are trying to figure out what happened here on MSNBC, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, while paging through a stack of papers said to be Exit Poll data, just said: "Of those who made up their mind in the last three days, there was a slight favoring for Obama. If there was a huge difference in a move to Hillary, in the last three days, it doesn't seem to be reflected in the Exit Polling."

UPDATE 9:48pm PT: Olbermann repeated what Russert had said earlier, that Obama's internal polls showed him winning by 14%, Clinton's internal polls had Obama winning by 11%.

The effect of Obama being an African-American, the so-called "Bradley Effect", is now being discussed as the newest "reason" to explain the numbers. Though it's noted that it didn't effect Harold Ford in TN in '06, or even Obama in Iowa just five days ago.

(ADDED: Josh Holland from Alternet points out via email, correctly, concerning my point about the "Bradley Effect" not coming into play in Iowa: "The 'Bradley effect' would not work in an open caucus, where everyone can see whom everyone else is supporting. The theory requires the privacy of a voting booth." He's correct. Thanks for pointing that out! --- BF)

(FURTHER ADDED, from BRAD BLOG reader MG: "Call me old fashioned, but aren't Brad and Josh Holland forgetting that the "Bradley effect" requires a conflict between party loyalty and (unconscious or at least conflicted) racial bigotry. When some DEMOCRATS are polled, they feel obliged to say that they will vote for Democrat Bradley for Governor, but within the privacy of the polling booth they can indulge their racial fears by (thank heaven!) voting for a White Republican. The necessary conflict between party and bigotry does not occur in the context of a within-party primary, hence the Bradley effect is not operating here, and the Iowa caucus can be taken at face value of further evidence of this fact. Those Democrats vulnerable to the Bradley effect would in pre-polling opt for Hilary because she is "more experienced" and the Bradley effect would never come in to play.")

UPDATE 11:06pm PT: As we know, the presumption is always that the polls were wrong. Never the results. Despite how much less transparent the system used to count votes is than the system used to collect polling data. With that in mind, Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic, makes the following point, in a post headlined "How Wrong Were the Polls?", suggesting that the only numbers that changed here were Clinton's. She surged. Everyone else, even Obama who just had an historic victory in Iowa five days ago, did not...

Commenter Brian makes an observation "No one is talking about how the polls actually nailed Obama's number. Obama didn't lose this election. He stayed steady and Hillary surged ahead." That seems to be true. Here's a chart comparing the actual results to the most recent Pollster.com current standard estimate polling average.

Just as Brian says, the difference between the Obama poll level and the Obama vote total level seems to just be your basic statistical variance. The pollsters underestimated Clinton's level of support. People who were undecided as of the last round of polling seem to have gone overwhelmingly in her direction.

So where did her votes come from, if Exit Polling data showed, as mentioned by MSNBC above, that last minute deciders broke evenly, and even a bit more for Obama??

UPDATE 1/9/08, 12:49am PT: Bev Harris offers this very useful information in comments below. Worth elevating the key points up here to the original post:

Additionally, BeeSting then makes our night, with a pointer to this Ron Paul website, which lists all of the precinct results, and how each one of them was counted (by hand, or by Diebold/LHS Associaties/John Silverstro).

Thank you BeeSting and Bev both! Looks like we'll have lots to learn in the morning...

UPDATE 1/9/08 1:40am PT: Last update for the night. I hope. A quick note on all of this.

Over at Daily Kos, diarist "AHiddenSaint" has written a post quoting, and linking over to this one, by way of sharing his/her concerns about the NH results.

The result: an embarrassing thread of comments, smashing up AHiddenSaint for posting something that the dKos commenters feel is little more than "conspiracy theory". Foolishly (for them), they have taken a sentence from the original post, in which I noted that I "have no evidence at this time --- of chicanery," to wonder why I would therefore write such a post at all. Their claim: that I am some how charging that Clinton stole the election.

I have made no such claim. In fact, if there was skullduggery here, there are plenty of reasons to believe it could have been committed by any number of interested parties, who have nothing to do with the Clinton campaign.

Daily Kos, of course, is a Clinton-centric website, which, more disturbingly, (see NOTE below) purged diaries and diarists after the 2004 Ohio election, if they were judged to be questioning what went on there. I spoke to Markos (the site's founder) about that, when we were at a conference together in Vegas last Summer. He stills stands by his decision to purge those folks. That, despite so much that has come out since '04 to show that what happened was a travesty of democracy. As I told him then, he owes his readers an apology. He did add, however, that he has someone ("Georgia10") who now cover issues of Election Integrity on their front page.

The result of his purge, is the mindset of the commenters now seen over there. It seems to me they are are begging for a world of hurt, someday, when their candidate doesn't win, under questionable circumstances. They will, of course, have cornered themselves such that they won't be able to ask questions themselvses. In the bargain, they are now fostering a culture of fear. Fear of asking questions. Fear of insisting that our democracy be transparent, of the people, by the people and for the people. If it were only themselves they were hurting by fostering that culture, I wouldn't give a damn. But rest assured, their comments, actions and attitudes will be leveraged, as we move forward, to hurt all of us.

For the record, I am neither a Clinton supporter nor an Obama supporter (nor a supporter of anyone else in the race at this time, in any party.) I am a supporter of the VOTERS. Period. It's they --- us --- who could really use some support right about now. I intend to do exactly that. All damned year. No matter how many "tin foil hats" the shortsighted, self-destructive Kossack types, who are behaving like the worst of the Republicans, try to throw at me.

That's a promise. 'Night.

[NOTE: I have removed the accusation that dKos is "Clinton-centric", after objections from several Kossacks who point out that Hillary has scored poorly in online reader surveys there. While I stand by the belief that Markos and his site, generally support the ideals of Clinton and the Democratic party as a whole, apparently the "Clinton-centric" label is seen as inaccurate by those who know the site best. So I'm happy to retract that statement, as I have in the above update, since it's largely a side note to the point I was trying to make above. Apologies for the distraction there.]

UPDATE 1/9/08 5:21pm PT: The mainstream media joins us in our concerns. Finally. Tribune Media Services columnist Bob Koehler writes in tomorrow's syndicated column:

Much more on this, and the media's embarrassing inability to even note the "red flags" here, even after years of one example after another of these very Diebold voting systems used in NH being shown as manipulatable, prone to error, etc.

Much more from Koehler here...

UPDATE 1/9/08, 8:47pm PT: New docs show LHS executive plead guilty to narcotics trafficking. Details now here...

UPDATE 1/10/08, 1:47am PT: 7 Point Swing for Clinton Over Obama in NH's Diebold Precincts. Details now here...

UPDATE 1/10/08, 2:47am PT: Chris Matthews: Raw EXIT POLL Data 'Indicated Significant Victory' for Obama in NH. Details now here...

UPDATE 1/10/08, 12:05pm PT: I discussed concerns about the NH results, and the curious reaction (to put it nicely) to those of us who have legitimate questions about them, on this morning's Stephanie Miller Show. Audio of the short interview is here...

UPDATE 1/10/08, 6:10pm PT: KUCINICH CALLS FOR 'RECOUNT' OF NEW HAMPSHIRE BALLOTS...

FINAL UPDATE TO THIS ITEM: A Special Coverage Item, with an index of all the notable BRAD BLOG coverage of New Hampshire, is now posted here.... That's the item to check for any later coverage hereafter.

www.bradblog.com/