MANCHESTER, N.H. — Barack Obama surged toward victory today in New Hampshire's crucial primary, ebullient but cautioning his fevered supporters against overconfidence.
"Do not take this race for granted," the first-term Illinois senator told a crowd yesterday in Claremont. "We had a nice boost over the last couple of days but elections are funny things."
"You guys caught us by surprise," he said in Lebanon, where a throng far larger than could fit in the 800-seat Opera House had gathered. His voice was reduced to a raspy whisper by constant campaigning.
So, as unseasonably warm weather - 8 degrees Celsius - turned snow into slop, Mr. Obama spoke from the steps outside. "You're the wave and I'm riding it." His soaring fortunes and his growing bandwagon of support eclipsed both his Democrat rivals and the parallel Republican race.
U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigns at Concord High School in New Hampshire on Monday. (Jason Reed/Reuters)
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New Hampshire votes today. The outcome is expected to shape both the Democrat and Republican fields in this year's hectic and compressed primary calendar.
Building on his stunning victory last week in Iowa, polls showed the young, black senator opening a double-digit lead over the foundering campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton, the former first lady whose dream of returning to the White House could be doomed by today's results in the Granite State.
"If she loses here, she's really, really damaged," warned Andrew Smith, polling director for the University of New Hampshire. Not since 1992 has anyone gone on to win the presidency after failing to win either Iowa or New Hampshire. The last one to do it: Bill Clinton. But that precedent may provide scant comfort to Ms. Clinton. Her husband lost to two regional candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, not a soaring new star like Mr. Obama.
At times, Mr. Obama was talking yesterday like he had already won his party's nomination and was girding for the presidential fight.
"Right now, the polls show I can beat every Republican out there," he said, striking at the heart of the Clinton campaign's central theme, that the political veteran was the Democrat best positioned to retake the White House after eight years of George W. Bush.
With defeat looming, Ms. Clinton choked up, literally, although it wasn't clear if the moment of emotion was designed to soften her hard-edged persona and echoed her husband's practised ability to conjure emotions on demand. "This is very personal for me," Ms. Clinton said in a coffee shop, her eyes brimming. "Some people think elections are a game. They think it's like who's up or who's down." Her sincerity became the talking point for pundits for the rest of the day.
In the Republican race, polls showed Senator John McCain adding to his lead over Mitt Romney, the Mormon entrepreneur and ex-governor of Massachusetts. Should Mr. Romney suffer successive defeats, his bid for the nomination is likely finished. Last week in Iowa, he lost to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a folksy Baptist minister, and today Mr. McCain, the 71-year-old former prisoner of war, seems poised to drive another stake into Mr. Romney's presidential hopes.
But it was Mr. Obama, whose promise of change had energized Democrats and crucially, in New Hampshire, independents who can vote in either primary.
In a fierce counterattack, Ms. Clinton has tried to prick the ballooning support for Mr. Obama, conceding he is "a truly inspirational speaker" but adding he has "not done the kind of spade work" to back up the promises.
"We don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered," she said.
Mr. Obama shot back, evoking the seminal moment when John Kennedy galvanized the nation with a vow to land a man on the moon within a decade. "You can picture JFK saying, 'We can't go to the moon. It's a false hope. Let's get a reality check.' It is not, sort of, I think, what our tradition has been," Mr. Obama said yesterday.
Drawn by the whiff of impending victory and the buzz created by the possibility that a black politician who studiously avoids the race issue might be making a credible run at the White House, the media circus gathered around the Obama campaign. But just as Iowa, a small, mostly white, Midwestern state has only a spotty record of picking eventual winners, the importance of New Hampshire is often overstated.
Despite the famous "Live free or die" slogan that emblazons its licence plates and despite its flinty, independent, tax-averse reputation, New Hampshire's changing demographics makes it a far more liberal place that it was even a decade ago.
Increasingly, the population is clustered in Boston's extended suburbs and more than 30 per cent of the electorate is different from those who voted in 2000.
Still, back-to-back victories would be huge for Mr. Obama, especially since it would leave the Clinton campaign barely two weeks to regroup before the next big test in South Carolina where nearly half of the registered Democrats are black.
For the other Democrats, all older, all campaign veterans, New Hampshire may determine whether they have a political future. Former senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2004, is headed for a third-place finish, after narrowly beating Ms. Clinton for second in Iowa.
A strong showing would keep Mr. Edwards's campaign alive, at least until South Carolina. Meanwhile, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, distantly trailing the leading three, needs to overtake someone, something polls suggested is unlikely.
In the Republican field, Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney are vying for the win. Iowa's surprise victor, Mr. Huckabee, whose bedrock support among Christian right won't help much in the socially liberal Granite State, is aiming for a credible third. "I don't know where it's going to end up," Mr. Huckabee said. "Even if we don't end up third or fourth, we're still in the game 'cause we got a great situation going on in South Carolina."
If Mr. McCain can repeat his 2000 victory in New Hampshire, then the Republican race may be over for Mr. Romney.
New Hampshire's first voters - in the tiny, remote hamlet of Dixville Notch, population 74 and only a few minutes drive from the Quebec border - trekked at midnight to cast the first ballots in the nation's first primary. Ms. Clinton was totally shut out in the Dixville Notch Democratic race, while Mr. Obama got seven votes, Mr. Edwards got two and Mr. Richardson got one, CNN reported this morning.
Mr. McCain showed an early lead in the Dixville Notch primary, garnering four votes to Mr. Romney's two and Rudolph Giuliani's one.
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Changing fortunes
Early stage primaries, such as New Hampshire, are all about momentum. This chart shows the average of all the major surveys in the state to chronicle the chaning fortunes of the leading candidates, with new front-runners charging ahead since Thursday's caucuses in Iowa.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Obama: 36.9%
Clinton: 29.1%
Edwards: 18.8%
REPUBLICAN PARTY
McCain: 33.6%
Romney: 28.7%
Huckabee: 11.5%
Giuliani: 8.8%
Thompson: 2.7%
SOURCE: REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM
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