THE NOTE: Primary Day

Jan. 8, 2008 -- MANCHESTER, N.H. -- After an intense five-day sprint out of Iowa, New Hampshire voters appear poised to give their support to the youngest Democrat in the race and the oldest first-tier Republican -- an unlikely pair that would be united by a restless moment.

The first primary contest of the race for 2008 appears likely to impose a measure of order on the chaotic Democratic and Republican presidential fields, defining the terms of much of the rest of the campaign -- though surely not leaving anything settled.

Voting started at most polling places at 6 am ET, after a tense, sleepless final day of campaigning that saw Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., overcome with emotion, and her husband venting frustration at what he views as the media's soft treatment of her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

It all served to underscore the remarkable stakes in the Granite State on Tuesday: The Democratic race pits the Clinton legacy against the Obama phenomena, with a dash of old-fashioned populism tossed in by John Edwards.

On the Republican side, a former governor from neighboring Massachusetts stakes his wallet against an old hero who is trying to make a comeback. Wild cards include America's mayor, an Internet superstar, a former star of "Law & Order," and an obscure former governor who just last week rocketed to victory in Iowa.

The New Hampshire secretary of state is expecting record turnout, of more than 500,000 on a clear and unseasonably warm day, and state election officials report long lines at polling places.

Independent voters could determine both contests, powering both Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., though more are expected to vote in the Democratic primary than in the Republican contest.

Polling locations close by 8 pm ET, with about three-fourths of the vote in by 7. The results will be eagerly awaited by all the campaigns -- but the stakes are highest for Clinton and former governor Mitt Romney, R-Mass.

Both were long considered frontrunners in New Hampshire, and while the latest polls show them trailing coming into Tuesday's balloting, both have seen their deficits stabilize in the closing hours.

The latest WMUR/CNN poll has Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., held a 39-30 edge over Clinton, with Edwards at 16 percent.

On the GOP side, McCain was up 31-26 over Romney, with former governor Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., at 13 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, R-N.Y., tied at 10.

Polls aside, neither Clinton nor Romney is ceding New Hampshire. Clinton capped a hectic final day of campaigning -- marked by a rare moment of raw emotion where tears welled up in her eyes (and she managed to stay on message) -- by telling Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America" that she's been held to a different standard than her male opponents, whom she said have been given a "free ride."

"They are obviously in some kind of a buddy system here, and that's fine," Clinton said. "For both Sen. Edwards and Obama, they've been given pretty much a free ride, and that's fine. . . . But at some point the free ride ends -- maybe it ends now, maybe it ends in a month, maybe it ends in the general election. You cannot be elected president if you do not withstand the tough questions."

And at one of his final campaign appearances, former President Bill Clinton -- 1992's "Comeback Kid," with his own reputation on the line 16 years later -- lashed out at Obama and the news media

"It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years, and never got asked one time -- not once, 'Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution?' " Clinton said, per the New York Sun's Josh Gerstein.

He wasn't done yet: "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," the former president said.

Obama, meanwhile, is closing the campaign brimming with confidence, catching a strong current that's carried him through the five-day sprint between Iowa and New Hampshire.

"I'm riding the wave. You are the wave, and I'm riding it," he told an overflow crowd in Lebanon, N.H.

And, mocking a line Clinton used in Saturday night's debate, he said: "False hopes! False hopes! There's no such thing." He continued: "If anything crystallizes what this campaign is about, it's that right there."

It was a strikingly different message from a candidate at a headier stage of his campaign. "He showed a different kind of emotion from Clinton: the ebullient confidence of a man on a roll," Peter Canellos and Michael Kranish write in The Boston Globe. "Obama suggested that Clinton's attitude would have led President Kennedy to forgo moon travel and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to abandon his dream."

On the Republican side, McCain is the big story, as he seeks a repeat of the upset victory that carried him over George W. Bush in 2000. He rebranded his own campaign slogan -- "The Mac is Back" -- in his final, frantic push for votes.

"It is kind of a flashback," McCain said on Monday, per The Washington Post's Dana Milbank.

Milbank: "Ladies and gentlemen, John McCain is back. Left for dead when his campaign ran out of cash last summer, he returned to his endless town hall meetings and freewheeling talks on his campaign bus -- and he's risen to the top of the Republican primary polls in New Hampshire, just as he did eight years ago."

Romney, seeking to grab the mantle of change that helped Obama and Huckabee win Iowa, sought to recalibrate expectations for his finish. His campaign was built from the start on winning Iowa and New Hampshire; now he stands on the precipice of losing both, despite having outspent all of his opponents combined on TV ads in both states.

"If I come in a second-place finish, that will actually say that I am clearly one of the leading contenders," Romney said Monday, per the Concord Monitor's Lauren R. Dorgan. "I will have come in second in Iowa, first in Wyoming, second in New Hampshire. That will mean that I probably have more votes than anybody else in those first three states."

But spin is spin, and expectations are stubborn things. "Romney seemed to be trying to rewrite history," write the Chicago Tribune's Jill Zuckman and Rick Pearson. "He spent millions of dollars of his personal fortune to establish himself as the front-runner in Iowa, where he lost to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and in New Hampshire, a state where he owns a vacation home and is well known from his days as governor in next-door Massachusetts."

And he didn't finish the day without one of those killer quotes: "I'm not ending my campaign in New Hampshire. Let me be clear about that."

A Romney loss on Tuesday would makes next week's Michigan primary perhaps his last chance to grab a victory. Still, he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America" that between Iowa, Wyoming, and New Hampshire, he'll almost certainly have received the most votes of any Republican candidate by the time the day is through.