While I was in New York state this weekend I went shopping at the local grocery store. It was the largest in the area and was even larger than most in Washington D.C. Somehow during a rather long
checkout process we got around to discussing the political race. The woman bagging the groceries told me she wasn’t going to vote this time around, and she had voted in every presidential election before this one. I asked her why, and she said, “I am a Hillary person.” — I am not amazed at that kind of talk, as I hear it from my old feminist friends in Boston — but hearing it from an African-American woman in semi-rural New York was quite a shock.

What does this mean? There was a Wall Street Journal article this week that pointed out that people lie to pollsters all the time, and pollsters are having to design questions around that factor. The article focused on age and race as being the two unknown demographic factors.
But what about the Hillary factor? Has anyone taken that into account?

We are seeing a neck-and-neck race right now between Senators Obama and McCain, and in some swing states a few hundred votes can make a difference. Many pundits, myself included, have said Senator Obama needs a vice presidential candidate who can bring a state in.

That is true, but what about the lady in the grocery store? I am not sure that those women have been accounted for, and they could very well stay home. They are so mad that they could be the “Nader Factor” as we saw in the 2000 election and swing the election to Senator McCain.
Someone from the Obama campaign hopefully is counting them and courting them, or there will be a lot of crow eaten by Democrats and pundits.