Following a stunning and nailbiting election night, I've been asking myself why Clinton defied expectations and edged out a narrow victory.

 

A considerable number of reasons have been put forward since and I do think several factors played into it - though we will never know for sure regarding most of them.

 

Ballot Order favouring Clinton is an exception and it contributing to HRC's win cannot be reasonably doubted.

 

Why?

 

Unlike in past years, NH authorities randomly selected one letter in the alphabet and listed in descending order the 21 (!) candidates participating in the NH Democratic Presidential Primaries.

 

As a result, Clinton was listed 4th on the ballot, while Obama could be found way down the list on the 18th position.

 

The ABC story (link further below) suggests that based on data from past elections, such a favoured position on the ballot gives a well-known candidate a 3% or greater boost. Considering the sheer length of this NH ballot, I believe the author, Jon Krosnick, a social sciences professor from Stanford, is right in believing the margin being greater than 3%.

 

As I am writing this, Clinton leads Obama with 39.16% over his 36.44%. That's well-below the conservative 3% swing past findings have established.

 

In that light, I contend it's almost certain Hillary Clinton has to thank the NH electoral authorities for her close victory. The letter "Z" being selected decided this race!

 

I'm amazed this story has yet to be widely reported and am dismayed New Hampshire adopted such an inherently unfair procedure in the first place.

 

Here's a sample ballot:

 

http://www.sos.nh.gov/Dem%2 0ballot.pdf

 

Last night, seeing the LONG list of candidates on the Concord Monitor results table and reading somewhere that the ballots listed in alphabetical order, I grew concerned about this potential issue. Scoring up and down the internet I finally found a story regarding this matter:

 

http://www.abcnews.go.com/P ollingUnit/Decision2008/sto ry?id=4107883&page=1&nb sp;

 

Quite frankly, I marvel how many election fairness issues pop up all over the place in US politics. Running fair elections isn't rocket science. Perhaps the US should look at how we run elections here in Germany?