Manchester (New Hampshire, US): Fresh from big wins in Iowa, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee said they had momentum as they swept into New Hampshire on Friday to campaign for the next prize in the US presidential race.
A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Friday gave Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain leads in New Hampshire, but the polling was done before Iowa's contest on Thursday in which Clinton finished third, and did not include a predicted bounce for Obama as a result of his Iowa victory.
All the major candidates fanned out across New Hampshire for political events, ahead of back-to-back debates in Manchester on Saturday night and the state's primary contest on Tuesday.
Iowa's caucuses kicked off a state-by state process to pick the Democratic and Republican candidates to run in the November presidential election to replace President George W Bush. The prize for the Iowa winners is valuable momentum and at least a temporary claim to the front-runner's slot.
Hillary, 60, a New York senator who would be the first woman US president and who has for months occupied a commanding front-runner's position in national opinion polls, was solidly beaten in Iowa by Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president.
"I think it's a harbinger of what's going to happen around the country," Obama said early on Friday on his flight from Iowa to New Hampshire.
He said his message of hope and a desire for change hit home with Iowans, encouraging many to vote for the first time.
Obama drew rave reviews for a victory speech in Des Moines with soaring rhetoric about how he wants to unify the United States after years of political division between Democrats and Republicans.
Hillary, a former first lady, has argued the 46-year-old Obama lacks the experience to take on the challenges facing the next White House occupant.
So far her campaign was sticking with that argument heading into the New Hampshire vote.
"This is an election that is really going to be about the choice that people have between an experienced leader for change versus leadership with less experience that talks about change," Hillary's chief strategist, Mark Penn, said on Hillary's late-night flight from Iowa.
PAGE_PAGE
The Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll put Obama within striking distance of Hillary in New Hampshire. She led Obama 32 per cent to 26 per cent. Former Sen. John Edwards, the runner-up in Iowa, was at 20 per cent and no other Democrat was in double digits.
How big will the Huckabee bounce be?
Huckabee, 52, a former governor of Arkansas and former Baptist preacher, was the surprise Republican winner in Iowa, coming out of nowhere to defeat rival Mitt Romney. Romney had outspent Huckabee in Iowa by a 20-to-1 margin and had led the polls there for months until a late Huckabee surge.
Like Obama, Huckabee rode a wave of grass-roots enthusiasm to victory by touting an outsider's message of change in Washington.
Political pundits do not give Huckabee much of a chance in New Hampshire, giving him plenty of room to make another surprise showing.
"We certainly come into this scene with momentum," Huckabee told NBC's "Today" show. "We also know that we may not win New Hampshire although who knows, we might. We've overperformed rather than underperformed every step of this journey."
Romney wanted to make a one-two punch in Iowa and New Hampshire to seize control of the Republican race.
Now, he is scrambling in New Hampshire, challenged by McCain, the Arizona senator and former Vietnam war prisoner who won the state in the 2000 election and whose penchant for straight talk appeals to the flinty nature of the people here.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who would be the first Mormon president if elected, told NBC he would be satisfied with second place in New Hampshire.
"I think anybody's got to come in first or second in New Hampshire," he said. "I'm hoping to get one of those two tickets out of New Hampshire."
McCain told Fox News he was satisfied with the momentum he has in New Hampshire and hopes to convince undecided voters to support him.
"We've just got to keep it up. We've got a lot of voters here - got to make up their minds in the next few days," he said.
The 2008 campaign is the most open presidential race in more than 50 years, with no sitting president or vice president seeking their party's nomination, and the Iowa contest was the most hotly contested in the state's history.
Turnout among Democrats in Iowa topped 220,000, smashing the previous record of 124,000 in 2004 - testament to the high enthusiasm among Democrats heading into November's election.
Comments
0 comment