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By Jitendra Joshi, Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON: New Hampshire’s famously
bloody-minded voters scored triumphant comeback victories for
Hillary Clinton and John McCain to blow the Democratic and
Republican White House races wide open.
Voters in the Granite State—motto “Live Free
or Die”—defied the pollsters who had predicted that Barack Obama
would deliver another sucker punch after he stunned Clinton by
winning in Iowa last week.
The former first lady can reach back in time to
1992, when New Hampshire made her husband Bill the “Comeback
Kid” on his road to the White House.
Her narrow victory by a margin of 39 percent to
37 for Obama put a dent in his surging campaign, built on a soaring
promise of change to mend America’s broken body politic.
But pundits said that while it was always
premature to write Clinton off after Obama’s win in the Iowa
caucuses, the New York senator still faces a battle royale against
her charismatic colleague.
“The race is wide open,” Quinnipiac
University Polling Institute assistant director Peter Brown said.
“At the beginning, everyone thought she was
the inevitable nominee. Then after Iowa, it was all about Obama
blowing her out of the water. Now, we have a race again,” he
commented.
For the Republicans, the 2008 marathon remains
in a state of flux after Senator McCain’s victory, but analysts
said that one definite loser was former Massachusetts governor Mitt
Romney.
Romney had banked on winning both Iowa and New
Hampshire to derail former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s
national campaign.
He lost both, and meanwhile Giuliani continues
to lie in wait for Florida on January 29 and then “Super
Tuesday” on February 5, when more than 20 states including
goliaths California and New York will vote.
But McCain, the 71-year-old “comeback
codger” is, like Clinton, well and truly back in the running after
his faltering campaign looked dead and buried in the summer.
“It’s not inappropriate that McCain
represents a state (Arizona) whose capital is Phoenix, as his
victory tonight is phoenix-like. Mitt Romney meanwhile has a
serious, serious problem,” Brown said.
And Iowa winner Mike Huckabee was not hurt by
his third-placed finish in New Hampshire, as the Bible-thumping
former Arkansas governor heads to South Carolina and its powerful
base of evangelical Republican voters.
For the Democrats, the outcome in New Hampshire
defied pre-primary polls that gave Obama as much as a double-digit
lead over Clinton, following his victory in Iowa.
Pundits were divided on whether a rare show of
emotion by Clinton on Monday had helped her chances in New
Hampshire, when her eyes moistened and her voice quavered as she
described her passionate belief in a better America.
But the numbers definitely showed a late swing
back to her and away from Obama.
According to an exit poll breakdown by CNN,
voters under 30 favored Obama by 51 percent to 28 for Clinton. But
among women, who formed a majority of New Hampshire voters, the New
York senator had a 47-34 edge over Obama.
And a sizeable number of independent voters, who
could take part in either party’s race, appeared to have opted to
vote for McCain to the detriment of Obama’s hopes.
South Carolina Democrats, half of whom are
African-Americans, vote on January 26 in a major test of whether
Obama can continue his run or whether black voters will stay loyal
to Hillary and Bill.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Hillary
Clinton was now likely to turn as aggressive as a tiger at the San
Francisco Zoo that recently escaped its enclosure and killed a
17-year-old youth.
“And Barack Obama is going to be one of the
teenagers,” he told the Washington Post, forecasting a
tooth-and-claw campaign to come.
A week before South Carolina are the Nevada
caucuses, which could tilt either way depending on which Democrat
gets endorsed by the state’s biggest trade union on Wednesday.
“Clinton has plenty of resources and lots of
organizational support around the country,” said Linda Fowler,
professor of government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire,
looking ahead to Super Tuesday.
Quinnipiac’s Brown said Clinton had done well
to mobilize her core supporters among New Hampshire women, trade
unionists and older voters.
“But the result needs perspective,” he said.
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