New Hampshire: Step 2 on the long road

No one ever said it was going to be easy to win the presidential nomination.

Well, some did.  But they were wrong.

Proving most of the tracking polls wrong, Hillary Clinton pulled out a narrow win over Barack Obama in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary yesterday.  Most polls had Obama leading by between 8 and 12 points, pulling momentum from his victory last week in Iowa.  Clinton drew her strongest support from the more urbanized parts of New Hampshire in the southeast corner and southern border areas of the state, as well as the northern reaches close to the Canadian border, while Obama controlled the rest of the state.  John Edwards did not withdraw from the race and promised to soldier on after a 17-percent finish.

On the Republican side, John McCain won as expected, 37-32 over his closest rival, Mitt Romney.  When McCain’s campaign was dead in the water last fall, Romney was expected to take New Hampshire easily, but as McCain surged in December, so did his profile in New Hampshire, where he remains popular from his 2000 victory over now-President George W. Bush.  Iowa victor Mike Huckabee ran a distant third in New Hampshire at 11 percent, while Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul came in at 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

What does it all mean?Democrats

As long as the 39-36 result stays stable, Clinton and Obama will both walk away from New Hampshire with nine more delegates to their name.  Clinton will almost certainly be seen as having staunched the bleeding from her loss in Iowa, turning the upcoming contest in South Carolina into a no-holds-barred, heads-up cage match.  If Edwards does not demonstrate some kind of upward momentum in South Carolina and Nevada, his prospects of pulling enough delegates to be a factor at the Democratic National Convention in August grow thin.

Republicans

Who knows?  Huckabee’s background as a preacher and his effectiveness at turning out evangelical voters should play well in South Carolina, but will it matter?  The contests in Michigan and Florida matter for the Republicans (Democratic delegates from those states will not be seated at the DNCC because they scheduled their primaries before Feb. 5, and those states are expected to be a contest among Giuliani, Romney and McCain. A win for one candidate in one state, a win for another in another state, and Tsunami Tuesday becomes a muddled picture for the Republican field, with no clear front-runner.  Such a situation favors the Giuliani campaign — the former New York mayor has, after all, focused his energy mainly on the bevy of delegates available on February 5. He has also discussed 9/11 at length on the campaign trail.  In case you haven’t heard.  Seriously.

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In general the New Hampshire result demonstrates a continuing trend:  a massive excitement advantage for the Democratic field over their Republican rivals.  McCain’s winning vote total trailed that of the second-place Democrat, Obama, and the Democratic field totaled more than 280,000 votes, while the Republican field’s total came in around 230,000 votes.  For a supposed “swing” state, that does not bode well for the Republicans. The more muddled each party’s picture on Feb. 5, however, the more of a role Minnesota will have in deciding both parties’ nominees.  Last night DFL Executive Director Andy O’Leary said he expects a “historic” turnout for precinct caucuses on Feb. 5 — increasingly, it looks like he may be correct.