Early returns from New Hampshire put Republican Senator John McCain ahead in the Republican Presidential nomination race — while the Democratic Party’s race is too close to call. The question thus becomes: will pollsters be red-faced tomorrow — and the conventional wisdom be changed again?
The reason: rather than showing a massive blowout for Senator Barack Obama on the Democratic side, early returns show Senator Hillary Clinton narrowly ahead. CNN has projected McCain will win the Republican primary. (Here is a LIST of polls going into the vote.)
Sen. John McCain will win the New Hampshire GOP primary, CNN projects.
Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in a tight race, early results show.
Clinton and Obama are within 2 percentage points of each other as early vote counts come in.
With 11 percent of precincts counted, Clinton had 39 percent of the vote to Iowa caucus winner Obama’s 36 percent. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards had 17 percent. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had 4 percent, and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich had 1 percent.
Edwards will finish third, CNN projects.
With 9 percent of Republican precincts reporting, McCain had 37 percent of the vote. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was second with 28 percent, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the winner of last week’s Iowa GOP caucuses followed with 12 percent.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had 9 percent and Texas Rep. Ron Paul had 8 percent.
If this holds up, Obamamania will have been checkmated. href=”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22551718/”>MSNBC:
John McCain was leading Mitt Romney in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, early returns showed Tuesday. On the Democrats’ side, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton battled in a race that was too close to call.
Even before the voting ended at 8 p.m. EST, there were reports of possible changes in staff and strategy in Clinton’s campaign.
…The economy and the war in Iraq were the top issues in both party primaries, according to interviews with voters leaving their polling places after casting ballots in the most wide-open presidential race in at least a half-century.
Exit polls showed independents constituting a slightly larger proportion of voters on the Democratic side — they made up 43 percent of those voting Democratic, as opposed to 38 percent on the Republican side.
In New Hampshire, independents can opt to vote in either party’s primary, making attracting them a key to victory.
If Clinton wins, some questions should be asked, such as:
–Polls started showing a sizable Obama margin going into the vote. What happened?
–Former President Bill Clinton has been criticized by some (including yours truly) for melding Hillary Clinton’s campaign into a campaign seemingly with him as the unofficial co-candidate. Rather than cause a backlash, did this help her?
–How did the two organizations stack up in terms of the ground game?
–Did Ms. Clinton’s getting choked up on Monday strike a chord with New Hampshire voters? It got widespread media play.
TWO EXCELLENT WEBSITES GIVING CONSTANT UPDATES:
–The liberal site Think Progress
–Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.