By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : Riding a wave of female support, Hillary Clinton staged a dramatic comeback win over Barrack Obama, aiming to be America’s first black president, in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary late Tuesday night.
In a close contest, the former first lady led by 39 to 36 percent votes over Iowa caucus victor Obama, with most votes counted. John Edwards, the Democrats’ 2004 vice presidential nominee, was a distant third with 17 percent.
“Together let’s give America the kind of comeback that New Hampshire has just given me,” said Clinton as Obama conceded, despite his 10-13 point lead in most opinion polls before the tiny state voted Tuesday.
“I want especially to thank New Hampshire. Over the last week I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice,” Clinton told cheering supporters Tuesday night.
Congratulating Clinton on a “hard-fought victory”, Obama praised “all the candidates in this race” as “patriots who serve this country honourably”.
But he was “still fired up and ready to go”, he told cheering supporters. “You made it clear in this moment and this election there is something happening in America. We are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction.”
The win over Obama gave the Clinton campaign a shot in the arm as the state-by-state nomination process headed towards Feb 5 “Super Tuesday” when voters in 22 of the 50 states pick presidential candidates.
Obama still has considerable political support among male voters, young people and independents. His campaign is also banking on a victory in the Jan 26 primary in South Carolina, where it expects the heavily black electorate to rally around him.
On the Republican side, Vietnam war veteran Senator John McCain defeated former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by a 37 to 32 percent margin, reviving a campaign that had been given up for dead just a few months ago.
To cheers of “Mac is back”, McCain told supporters: “My friends, you know I’m past the age when I can claim the noun ‘kid’, no matter what adjective precedes it. But tonight, we’ve sure showed them what a comeback looks like.”
Romney, who also finished second in last week’s Iowa caucuses but won the Wyoming caucus, said he was looking forward to the Jan 15 primary in Michigan – where he was born and where his father was governor.
“I’ll fight to be back here in November,” Romney said. “I’ll fight to make sure we strengthen our homes and our families … by strengthening our economy.”
Iowa Republican caucus winner Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, said he’s “seen momentum build” in the last few weeks and pledged to ride it to the Republican nomination, despite his third-place finish with 11 percent vote in the New Hampshire primary.
“If there’s any sadness tonight,” he said, “it’s not because of where we finished because, whew, we’re pretty happy about that.”
Former New York Mayor, Rudi Guiliani, finished fourth among Republicans with only nine percent.
Reflecting the intense statewide interest in the contest in both parties, turnout approached record levels and New Hampshire’s independent voters most likely were the ones who decided both parties’ races.
As they had in Iowa, Democrats cited a desire for change in making their votes. Republicans said leadership and personal qualities were more important to them than positions on the issues.
Several New Hampshire women, some of them undecided until Tuesday, said in media interviews that a galvanising moment in the race had been Clinton’s unusual display of emotion Monday when her eyes filled with tears and her voice cracked as she described the pressures of the race and her goals for the nation.
In the Republican primary, McCain got 38 percent of voters unaffiliated with either party, and the same proportion of registered Republicans, according to exit polls.
In the case of Democrats, Obama got about four in 10 undeclared voters and Clinton got about a third of their support. Clinton got 45 percent of the registered Democrats, and Obama got a third of undeclared voters.
Most Republican voters said they had a favourable opinion of McCain, Romney and Rudi Giuliani, while about 80 percent of Democratic voters looked favourably on Obama and Edwards, and 73 percent viewed Clinton favourably.