Latest/Earliest deciders for Clinton

Sifting through exit polls from Super Tuesday I've noticed an interesting pattern. In poll after poll it seems that Clinton won the same day deciders while Obama was strong in the week before the primary. Here's a state by state breakdown:

Decided?
SD = Same Day
L3 = In the Last 3 days
LW = In the Last Week
LM = In the Last Month
BF = Before

W/L = Split in final vote

All #'s from CNN.

If Clinton won a group it's listed as a positive number, if Obama won it's listed as a negative.

State	SD	L3	LW	LM	BF	W/L
AL	19	-6	-38	-32	-14	-14
AK						-50
AR	36	27	25	20	58	43
AZ	5	1	-12	-22	27	9
CA	10	-5	9	-29	38	10
CO						-35
CT	8	-19	-28	-27	12	-4
DE	10	-24	-29	-37	6	-10
FL	4	-8	-8	-7	36	27
GA	4	-17	-54	-52	-28	-36
ID						-62
IL	8	-24	-14	-33	-46	-22
IA	-11	-11	4	-10	-6	-8
KS						-44
MA	20	-1	-7	-5	34	15
MI	17	2	16	9	25	15
MN						-35
MO	-2	-8	-19	-8	8	-1
NV	12	-4	-8	-17	29	6
NH	3	-3	-15	-10	17	2
NJ	13	7	-2	-10	23	10
NM	4	-4	-16	-35	11	1
NY	9	-11	-1	-10	30	17
ND						-24
OK	25			1	35	24
SC	-32	-29	-35	-42	-15	-28
TN	0	11	0	-7	27	13
UT	-36			-31	6	-18
AVG	5.727	-6.3	-11.6	-17.9	14.23	-7.11

(PS: missing some data here, if anyone can fill it in or spots a mistake let me know)

Take a look at the averages... they're slightly skewed by the strong preferences in certain states (SC, UT, IL, GA, etc). I'll look into weighting them to account for this.

But the big story is Clinton is very consistently winning the same-day deciders and the the people that decided early on.

So who are these two groups of people? My theories:

Early Deciders (>1 month ago)
First and foremost her die-hard supporters... people that have loved her since the 90's and women committed to seeing a female president.

Second, her soft early support that has hardened some. People that got behind her when she was the clear front runner and have held their ground in the face of the Obama surge.

Same-Day Deciders
My guess is these are the less-engaged, finger in the wind folk mixed with the name-recognition folk. Her strength here has been consistent, with three exceptions: IA, UT & SC.

UT doesn't have data for LW or LM, so for now I'll ignore it.

Iowa is a microcosm to itself... but some things to note. IA and NH are the two states where name recognition holds almost no weight, because damn near everyone gets to meet the candidates. IA also has a very politically engaged populace and polling was neck and neck coming into the race, so that eliminates the under informed populace.

SC on the other hand is one case that points in my favor. The SC voters knew in advance that Obama was expected to win heavily and he ended up winning a larger % of same-day deciders than he did L3 deciders.

Hillary has generally had strong leads in national and Feb 5 polls. So I think on Feb 5 she got a heavy portion of the finger-in-the-wind same-day deciders along with almost all of the name recognition voters.

The Future
So what to expect in the future?

Well, *if I'm right*, this could be bad news for Hillary.

As the race extends she'll lose some (though not all) of her name recognition advantage. The upcoming states are much more spread out, giving more time for national and local coverage of all the candidates, along with allowing ads to play for a while in those states.

The bigger (and scarier) bell-weather will be if the finger-in-the-wind voters swing away from her. Obama is lined up for a string of strong showings in the next month. If this causes him to be perceived as the likely winner at the state and/or national level I would expect this section of the voters to swing towards him.

Finally, the early deciders. The big question is how hard their support is. Up until now "within the last month" has included just after IA & NH. If this group continues to fall heavily for Hillary she'll keep a strong enough base that she won't suffer any huge losses.

What to look for

-Watch the exits on Feb 12th. A strong showing by Obama this Saturday (the 9th) might be enough to tilt the late deciders to his side. If so he'll do very well on the 12th and could rack up some pretty big margins. (Edit: Also watch Maine on the 10th, though it may not be as indicative of a sea change in opinion b/c it will also coincide with a positive Obama news cycle after 2/9 wins)

-Keep an eye on the early deciders (>1 month). If they remain strong for Hillary, both in % support and in the % of the vote, over the next few weeks then I think it's fair to assume that they are hard Clinton and unlikely to be changed anytime in the race. If the % support swings Obama then it means that his early, post IA/NH campaigning is helping. If the % of the total vote slips (and Obama continues to lead L3, LW, LM) then it indicates his more recent campaigning is having an effect. Either way if this bastion of votes slips from Hillary's fingers she's in for a long bumpy ride to March 4th.