What did New Hampshire tell us?

Well it took all of 14 minutes for CNN to project John McCain the Republican primary winner in New Hampshire. It took most of the remainder of the night to finally declare Hillary Rodham Clinton the winner over Barack Obama, while CNN easily projected John Edwards to finish third in the Democratic primary within about five minutes.

A number of interesting things played out over the course of the evening as the results of the primary unfolded. The Republicans still have a very crowded field with many of the lower tier candidates still having their main focus on the later primaries in South Carolina and Florida. While McCain may have won the primary in New Hampshire to establish “Mac is back”, Romney finished second again, as in Iowa, with Huckabee falling back to the second tier candidates after his win in Iowa. Giuliani and Thompson have yet to really put on an effective campaign in either of the first two primaries.

A major surprise to some and what should be disconcerting to the Republicans at this point, is the significant increase in the number of voters in the Democratic primary compared to previous years, while the number of Republican voters actually decreased. While Kerry took New Hampshire by 1.4% over Bush in 2004, it is significant to note that the second place finisher in the Democratic primary will have more votes than the winner of the Republican primary.

On the Democratic side it appears to me that unless Edwards pulls out a clear win in either South Carolina or Florida, he may be only running a campaign for vice president, leaving the real race to Clinton and Obama.