In the wake of the New Hampshire primary opinion polling fiasco, everyone is focusing on various reasons the pollsters "got it wrong." In the midst of all this media breastbeating, one fact seems to be escaping a lot of people -- it was the undecided voters who carried the day for Hillary Clinton.

If you compare the polling done just before the primary with the actual results of the primary, you'll find that (except for Hillary Clinton's total) the numbers were well within the margin of error for these polls. A little over one percent of Obama, Edwards, and Richardson voters changed their minds on election day, but the real story is that the roughly five percent of undecided voters all broke for Hillary at the last minute.

First, the numbers themselves. From RealClearPolitics, the average of seven polls done in the final days leading up to the primary averaged out thusly:

30.0% -- Clinton
18.3% -- Edwards
38.3% -- Obama
5.7% -- Richardson

The reality of the vote count, from the New Hampshire Secretary of State's official web page:

39.4% -- Clinton
17.1% -- Edwards
36.8% -- Obama
4.6% -- Richardson

This leaves a difference of plus 9.4% for Clinton, and minus 1.2%, 1.5%, and 1.1% for (respectively) Edwards, Obama, and Richardson. But this only totals 3.8%. Where did Clinton get the extra votes from?

Not included on the RealClearPolitics page is the "undecided" numbers for the polls. But if you follow the links to the polls themselves, you'll find that the undecideds averaged 5.3%. Which makes up the difference for Hillary.

Now, obviously, not every single undecided voter in New Hampshire voted for Clinton. Some of them voted for the other three (or for the enormous number of no-name candidates on the New Hampshire ballot), but some of the voters who polled for those three changed their minds at the last minute and swung to Clinton. Polling is always an inexact science, remember, so it's impossible to tell exactly what happened.

But to me, this reveals a truth that the political commentators in this country are loathe to admit -- the people who make up their minds at the last minute often decide elections. The pundits spend so much time examining the politics of the race under a microscope that it's hard for them to believe that some people wait until election day to make their selection. But it's true.

This is even harder for political bloggers to face up to, it should be noted. Bloggers, and the audience they cater to, are probably the most politically aware slice of the American electorate. Here's a quick quiz to prove this -- how many of the following names do you know: Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, James Carville, Karen Hughes, Mark Penn, Joe Trippi, Bernard Kerik, DeeDee Myers, or Peggy Noonan?

Most Americans would recognize one, maybe two people off that list -- if they recognized any of them at all. If you recognized five or more; face it, you're a political wonk. If you recognized eight or nine, then it's time to put down the remote and back away from the C-SPAN.

Seriously, though, people who are enmeshed in the political universe -- even if this means just posting comments to other people's blogs -- often forget how many Americans pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to politics. They either don't care, they're too busy, or they just don't find it all that interesting, for whatever reason.

But some of them also believe in their civic responsibility to vote. Which means a percentage of the vote on election day is always going to contain some people who make up their minds at the last minute. And these people -- by their very nature -- are impossible to poll accurately.

But don't get me wrong -- I'm not calling this whole group idiots, or even ignorant. I suspect the undecided voter demographic is as varied as any other in American life. It's true that there are some within this group who do vote almost at random -- this has been proved by studies which show that whichever name appears first on the ballot gets an extra two to three percent on election day, which has caused many states to arrange the names at random (to counter this effect). But beyond people who walk into the voting booth and select the top name on the list, there are also intelligent (but busy) people who pay no attention to politics until just before the election. Picture a brain surgeon who never watches the news and listens to classical music to relax at home. The night before the election, he logs on to each candidate's website and reads their pitch, then votes the next day for whoever impresses him the most. My point is, there is a whole spectrum of last-minute deciders out there, who cannot be pigeonholed easily.

When Mike Huckabee chose to leave Iowa the day before the caucus and tape an appearance on Jay Leno instead, many thought he was a fool. Until after the votes were counted. Now, I know this was likely a minor factor in his success in Iowa, but the fact remains that he may have reached more last-minute deciders by appearing on late night television than the rest of them did by holding traditional political events physically in Iowa. An astonishing percentage of the American public relies on late night TV as their primary source of news. Think about that -- people who don't read newspapers, don't watch cable news, and don't watch network news at all. They catch up on the zeitgeist of America by watching Jay, David, Conan and the rest of the late night comics -- and that's all the political news they ever hear or see.

This is why politicians visit these shows now on a regular basis. I would be willing to bet that if the writers' strike wasn't happening, every candidate would be deluging the booking staff at Saturday Night Live, begging to host the show, or at least do a cameo. Ever since Richard Nixon appeared on Laugh-In and quite possibly won an election by saying "Sock it to me, baby!" professional political advisors have realized the power of the entertainment side of television.

At this point, political wonks often exclaim (in horrified tones) "These people shouldn't be allowed to vote!" But you know what? The American election system gives everyone the right to vote. Not just those people who have a valid reason for selecting one candidate over another. For who would decide what "a valid reason" is? This is America, and an idiot's vote counts exactly the same as a busy and preoccupied person's vote, which also counts the same as a rabid supporter of any candidate.

And barring the invention of a device that can read a person's brainwaves over the telephone, or a device to see into the future, it will remain impossible using any polling technique to accurately predict the outcome of any vote before it actually happens. There will always be a percentage of the electorate which the polls just can't accurately predict.

Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way, because that's what makes elections so much fun. After all, if everyone knew what the outcome was, who would bother to go and vote?

-- Chris Weigant