Voters crowd polls for New Hampshire primary

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- New Hampshire voters crowded into polling places Tuesday for the final hours of the first-in-the-nation primary election — a race that once again may serve as a turning point in the race for the White House.

Large numbers of voters, many lining up before dawn, turned out in spring-like weather Tuesday to pick their favorites for president with the independent vote holding considerable sway over the outcome. Secretary of State Bill Gardner predicted a record turnout of about 500,000. The number would smash The previous high: 396,000 in 2000.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois looked to add New Hampshire to his victory in the Iowa caucuses last week, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and former North Carolina senator John Edwards also seeking a boost. Arizona Sen. John McCain led most pre-primary GOP polls, and a win here by him could muddy the Republican field already shaken up by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's Iowa win last week.

Obama spoke Tuesday at Dartmouth College while his relatives in Kenya gathered outside near a radio, waiting to hear results.

"Today you can make your voice heard — you can insist that change will come," he told the crowd. "The American people have decided for the first time in a very long time to cast aside cynicism, to cast aside fear, to cast aside doubts."

Although polls close at 8 p.m. ET, there was an early smattering of results. By tradition, two northern state hamlets — Dixville Notch and Hart's Location — turned out at en masse at midnight, long before statewide polls opened at 6 a.m., to cast the first 46 ballots of the primary seasons, half for Democrats and half for Republicans.

On the Democratic side, Obama picked up 16 votes, Clinton 3, Edwards 3 and Bill Richardson 1. On the Republican side, McCain got 10 votes, Huckabee 5, Rep. Ron Paul 4, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney 3 and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani 1.

McCain, who is locked in a tight race with Romney, joked that the early results were a good omen: "It has all the earmarks of a landslide, with the Dixville Notch vote."

Like last week's Iowa caucuses, the primary in New Hampshire had the potential for shaking up fortunes of candidates in both parties.

Following a third place finish in Iowa, Clinton has lost her national lead on the Democratic side, a new Gallup Poll shows, and Huckabee has wrested the top Republican spot from Giuliani.

Obama, who won last week's Iowa caucuses, is now tied at 33% nationally with Clinton, who finished third. Three weeks ago, she had a 15-point lead.

Huckabee, who also won in Iowa, was at 25%. Giuliani had 20% and John McCain 19%. All were within the poll's margin of error of +/-5 percentage points.

Even on election day the exhausted candidates were still shuttling around the state trying to rally their supporters.

In Manchester, three GOP hopefuls — Giuliani, Huckabee and Romney — even ran into each other outside Brookside Congregational Church in Manchester, where 50 voters lined up before dawn to cast ballots.

Romney predicted that independents "will get behind me."

Giuliani waved off a question about his decline in polls, pointing to the church and saying, "The only poll I'm interested in is the one that goes on inside there."

On the Democratic side, Clinton and her daughter Chelsea poured coffee for voters and a police officer at a Manchester elementary school before dawn.

"We're going to work all day to get the vote out," she said.

Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, also campaigned for his wife. In Exeter, N.H., he was asked if he had any advice for her.

"If you think you'd be the best president, you've got to keep trusting people and don't quit," he said. "These things go through a zillion cycles. You just have to believe in your self as a servant of the American people, and you have to believe in what you're trying to do and trust the people to make the right decision."

Going into the primary, Clinton trailed Obama in this state by double digits in several polls, including a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released Sunday.

McCain faced what pollster Scott Rasmussen called "an unusual two-front challenge" — competing with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for Republicans and with Obama for independents. He said Obama's rise was hurting McCain.

Romney closed with a theme he had toyed with briefly last fall: the need to change Washington, and his own "outsider" qualifications, as a former Olympics and business CEO, to do so. In speeches and a two-minute TV ad, he drew implicit contrasts with McCain, who is 71 and arrived in Congress in 1983.

No "Washington insider," Romney told a business group in Nashua, will be able to meet challenges such as job creation and expanded health coverage.

In Nashua Tuesday morning, Susan Larivee, 40, an accounting assistant and independent voter, said, "I look at the candidates as a whole," and recently decided on McCain in large part because of his military background and because "I really liked what he had to say."

"He has integrity," Larivee said. ""I think he's less of a politician."

Dick Greenwood, 69, Nashua, retired operations manager for Verizon and another undecided voter, said he's not crazy about the Democrats because "you don't solve problems by throwing money at them." But he said dislikes Republican opposition to abortion and stem cell research, "plus that dope in Washington didn't help any ... Mr. Bush."

He said he decided recently to back former Edwards. "I don't subscribe to either Republicans or Democrats," Greenwood said. "he seemed like the most middle of the road of all of 'em."

There was no letup in the television ad wars.TNS Media Intelligence, a firm that tracks political advertising, said Clinton spent $5.4 million to reach New Hampshire voters, and Obama spent $5 million.

The total for Edwards was $1.7 million, reflecting a smaller campaign treasury. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, fourth candidate in the race, could afford about $500,000.

As happened in Iowa, Romney spent more than his rivals combined on television for the New Hampshire primary.

Contributing: Jill Lawrence, David Jackson, Martha T. Moore and Susan Page in New Hampshire; Associated Press