Defying the predictions of political pundits, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton captured the early primary state of New Hampshire on Tuesday, dispelling the notion of a “coronation” for Sen. Barack Obama and sparking what now promises to be an exciting battle for the presidential nomination in 2008. “And the race is on!” declared Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the influential progressive blog Daily Kos. “Hillary Clinton just showed everyone who called this thing for Obama that there’s a much longer race in store.”

In the campaign for the Republican nomination, national underdog John McCain rode chants of “Mac is back” to victory in a state that he captured in the 2000 primaries - going so far as staying in the same hotel suite as that year’s primary - and giving a badly needed boost to his candidacy.

The results, yielding a four way split between the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, serve as a reminder to the press, the political pros, and even the candidates themselves that the race for nominations has just begun. Only six days into the score-keeping portion of the process and with less than one per cent of the electorate nationwide having their say, both parties’ nominations look to be hotly contested.

McCain’s candidacy had been declared all but dead early in summer, and its revival in New Hampshire reveals the cracks in the Republican Party and leaves the race for the nomination particularly wide open. “On the Republican side, there are now four candidates — Romney, McCain, Giuliani and Huckabee — who can spin a scenario that might take them to the nomination,” wrote John Nichols in his blog for the Nation magazine’s website.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had hoped to take New Hampshire but was relegated to second. Romney must now turn his attention to the Michigan primary on Jan. 15 — the state where he was born and where his father was a three-term governor in the 1960s — for the first victory he hopes will catapult him to being the leader of the Republican race. But history is now against Romney’s bid — no Republican who has failed to win either of the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire has gone on to receive the party nomination in the modern political era.

Iowa winner Gov. Mike Huckabee said beforehand that he would be pleased with the third-place finish he ended up with in libertarian-minded New Hampshire, but his weak performance — with 60,000 fewer votes than McCain — does not bode well for his campaign. Evangelical Christians had bolstered Huckabee, a Baptist minister, in the Iowa caucuses. But the notable lack of that demographic in New Hampshire had forced Huckabee to retool his message and emphasise his weak record of fiscal conservatism rather than his religious beliefs, touting his plan to eliminate the income tax and replace it with a large consumption or sales tax. But Huckabee can still be expected to fare well in some contests before the supposedly decisive “Super Tuesday” primaries in 21 states on Feb. 5, especially in heavily evangelical South Carolina, whose primary is Jan. 19. George W Bush took that state in 2000 with ruthless campaign tactics that brought down McCain’s bid in that election cycle. Until recently the national frontrunner, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani did not campaign heavily in New Hampshire — though he did spend more money than McCain or Huckabee — and accordingly received a fourth place finish.

While the Republican nomination race was being blown open, the Democratic picture may be narrowing. Former Democratic senator John Edwards was counting on a strong showing to effectively knock Clinton out of the race. “We view New Hampshire as a referendum on Hillary Clinton now,” Edwards adviser Joe Trippi told MSNBC before the polls had closed.

But that referendum returned a weak third place finish for Edwards, with only 17 per cent to Clinton’s 39 and Obama’s 36. Clinton, whom pollsters had all but written off by placing Iowa-winner Obama’s lead as high as 13 points in the days before the vote, reinvigorated her campaign by co-opting Obama’s compelling message of change.

But the blitz of campaigning appears to have left Clinton exhausted. At a discussion with voters in Portsmouth on Monday, she became emotional when asked how she keeps up with the rigours of the campaign schedule. Clinton momentarily choked up and said, “It’s not easy.”

After her victory, some commentators said that the departure from Clinton’s carefully structured and tightly controlled public image may have helped her in the race by exposing a more vulnerable side in a state that is well known for responding to ground level or “retail politics”. “For all the talk about whether a female candidate can get away with tearing up,” wrote columnist Ruth A Marcus in The Washington Post, “I thought the glimpse of vulnerable Hillary was her affecting, and effective, moment of the campaign and a factor in her unexpected victory Tuesday.” — IPS