The rightly esteemed Mark Blumenthal weighed in today with his assessment of the various theories for why the polls got the Clinton-Obama race in NH wrong. But while his post was helpful, it didn't provide any real answers. Blumenthal did pour at least cool water on the popular "Wilder Effect" theory that NH voters reported support for Obama and then voted for Clinton on racial grounds. And he also expressed doubts that indie defections from Obama to McCain shifted the results, on the same grounds I talked about last night.

But there has still been no discussion that I can find outside this site and OpenLeft about the theory that absentee ballots helped HRC bank a lot of NH votes prior to Iowa, that could not be tracked by pre-election or unadjusted exit polls. If that's right, all the thumb-sucking about disguised racism, the impact of HRC's show of emotion, and the idea that NH voters were reacting to polls or Iowa itself, could all be significantly off-target. So in my mind at least, the mystery persists.