It appears turnout for the Florida Republican primary will end up edging turnout for the Democratic contest -- but not by enough to quell the ongoing perception that Democratic voters are more enthusiastic about their candidate field than Republicans are about theirs.

With more than 90 percent of precincts reporting across the state, according to the Associated Press, there were 1,777,000 votes recorded in the Republican primary to 1,620,000 in the Democratic primary.

Yet the Republican electorate was subjected to full-bore campaigns by primary winner John McCain and runner-up Mitt Romney, both fighting for momentum and the mantle of "front-runner" heading into the crucial primary pile-up on Super Tuesday next week; Rudy Giuliani, who set up camp virtually full time in an unsuccessful effort to use Florida to turn the tide in his favor; and Mike Huckabee, who bid to build a Southern base in the primary. The candidates combined to spend millions of dollars on campaign ads and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

Democrats, on the other hand, turned out in relatively equivalent numbers, even though none of their candidates played any active role or spent any campaign money in encouraging them to do so.

That is because of the drastically different manner in which the national Republican and Democratic organizations pursued their disputes with their Florida affiliates over the state's decision to hold its primary on Jan. 29, prior to the Feb. 5 starting date that both national parties had set for most states.

The Democratic National Committee went draconian on the Florida Democrats, taking away away 210 of their national convention delegates and prevailing upon all its major candidates -- including primary winner Hillary Clinton, runner-up Barack Obama and third-place finisher John Edwards -- not to campaign in the state. The Republican National Committee also punished its Florida affiliate, but not nearly as harshly, taking away half of the alloted 114 delegates and allowing GOP candidates to campaign at will in the state.

Although Rudy Giuliani opened his Florida primary night speech quoting the "great philosopher" Yogi Berra in saying it's not over until it's over, there are now reports from multiple news outlets that the former New York City mayor will end his floundering bid for the Republican presidential nomination tomorrow and endorse Florida winner John McCain.

The reported decision comes in the wake of Giuliani's failure in a Florida contest that became do-or-die for him, largely a result of his own risky strategy. Though he had led in national Republican preference polls through most of 2007, it soon became evident that the "retail campaigning" of the early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire was not his forte. As he nosedived in polls in those states, Giuliani turned to Florida in hopes of establishing a "big state" strategy, with the name ID he had built with his image of stalwart leadership in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on his home city carrying him back in contention.

But his absence from competition for the key early weeks of the campaign, combined with the greater attention paid by the largely conservative Republican primary electorate to Giuliani's relatively liberal views on key social issues and his stormy personal life, irreparably deflated his campaign. Giuliani, in incomplete returns, has 15 percent of the Florida primary vote, way behind McCain at 37 percent and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 32 percent, and just 1 point ahead of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his underfunded campaign. Had Giuliani not run second behind McCain in populous Miami-Dade County -- home to numerous transplanted New Yorkers -- he would have dropped behind Huckabee.

If Giuliani drops out, he will become the second Republican to leave the race after showing that their presidential prospects were much more attractive in theory than in reality. Giuliani and Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator, both had strong showings in polls during the preliminaries to the campaign, but proved to have limited appeal among Republican primary participants when the actual voting began.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, at the beginning of his victory speech in Florida tonight, noted that he had won the first primary so far this year in which only Republicans were allowed to vote. McCain has drawn opposition from some conservative activists over some positions he has taken over the years as a Republican "maverick," and some observers had questioned whether he could prevail in states that did not allow independent voters to participate in Republican primaries (as was the case in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the two states where he had previously won primaries this year).

McCain singled out Gov. Charlie Crist and Sen. Mel Martinez for thanks. McCain was boosted by the late campaign endorsements by Crist and Martinez, the most prominent Republican officeholders in the state.

The Republican primary results in Miami-Dade County -- by far Florida's most populous jurisdiction -- went a long way toward sealing Arizona Sen. John McCain's projected victory: McCain dominated there, while ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, his closest rival statewide, failed to compete in Miami-Dade.

With about three-fifths of precincts counted, McCain took 49.3 percent of the Republican vote in Miami-Dade County. It was not Romney who finished second in the region, but former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was a distant third statewide, but -- benefitting from the large population of former New Yorkers transplanted to the county -- ran second in Miami-Dade with 29.7 percent. Romney checked in with just 14.9 percent.

The Associated Press and the networks are projecting Arizona Rep. John McCain as the winner over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by a close but clear margin.

The win gives McCain all 57 delegates at stake in Florida's winner-take-all primary (the state had half of its allocated delegates removed by the Republican National Committee over a scheduling dispute). Perhaps more importantly, it gives him added momentum -- following a similarly narrow win over ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Jan. 19 South Carolina primary -- heading into the crucial bloc of nearly two dozen voting events on "Super Tuesday" next week.

With just more than half of precincts reporting in AP's vote count, McCain had 37 percent to Romney's 32 percent. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who essentially camped out in Florida in hopes of offsetting poor showings in early primaries and caucuses, failed to do so, taking 16 percent in the partial count. Huckabee also endured a blow to his hopes of at least establishing himself as the premier candidate of the South, running fourth with 13 percent.

Call Florida's delegate-less Democratic primary a "beauty contest" or "straw poll" if you will, but that didn't stop easy winner Hillary Clinton from staging a full-blown victory party in the state tonight.

The primary night tableau was in sharp contrast to the one just three days earlier in South Carolina, where Barack Obama, Clinton's leading rival for the Democratic nomination, won a one-sided victory and roused a roomful of ecstatic supporters with the rousing oratory that is his political trademark.

This time it was Clinton who gave a pep talk to her supporters, describing the win as a preview of big victories she predicted for herself in the slew of primaries on next week's "Super Tuesday."

Clinton referred to the fact that she had joined the rest of the Democratic candidates in a voluntary embargo on campaigning in the state that had been requested by the Democratic National Committee, which had stripped the state party of its national convention delegates for breaking the party's scheduling rules for nominating contests. "I could not come here to ask in person for your votes, but I am here to thank you for your votes today," Clinton said.

She also repeated her intention to fight for the seating of the delegates from Florida and Michigan (where she won an earlier primary tainted by the same kind of scheduling dispute between the national and state parties). Clinton's move on this matter, announced just days before the Florida primary, outraged her opponents, who accused her of staging an end run.

And although the upfront role played in her campaign by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has caused controversy, she echoed the theme of his initial 1992 White House campaign in her Florida speech. "I believe it's time again we have a president who puts the American people first."

The networks have gotten the night's easy call out of the way, projecting New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as the easy winner of Florida's hobbled Democratic primary. Clinton, in partial returns, has 51 percent to 28 percent for Barack Obama and 17 percent for John Edwards.

The tangible benefit of this win for Clinton won't be determined for some time. The Florida Democratic Party has been stripped of all 210 of its delegates to the national convention by the Democratic National Committee because of a dispute over the state's violation of the national party's scheduling rules.

The DNC contends that its decision is final, and if it is, then Clinton's win will be merely symbolic. But Clinton, in the days before the Florida primary, said she would instruct her delegates at the national convention to vote to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan, which has incurred the same draconian penalty from the DNC for holding a Jan. 15 primary in which Clinton defeated an "uncommitted" line (Obama and Edwards had pulled their names from the ballot in support of the DNC's position). And some observers speculate that the national party eventually will give in, rather than risk further alienating Democratic voters in Michigan and Florida, which are expected to be key battleground states in the general election.

Today's results do suggest a couple of things about the Democratic contest going forward:

* Obama's one-sided victory in the South Carolina primary last Saturday has not given him unstoppable momentum. The "straw poll" or "beauty contest" devolution of the Florida Democratic primary, with no official delegates at stake and the candidates agreeing to forgo active campaigning, indicates that Clinton -- still the front-runner in national polls of Democratic voters -- maintains a strong base of support.

* Obama has done best so far in settings such as the Iowa caucuses and South Carolina primary, in smaller "retail politics" states where he has been able to bring his charisma fully to bear. But Florida, where he was not able to personally campaign, suggests that Obama has a formidable task in overcoming Clinton in the quasi-national primary on Super Tuesday, with nearly two dozen events from coast to coast, in which he will be much more reliant on media advertising and less on personal appearances to try to persuade voters.

In his campaign as the libertarian maverick in the Republican presidential nomination contest, Texas Rep. Ron Paul has drawn a small core of fervent followers, and he even broke into double-digit percentages in a couple of the early caucus events.

But there is a reason why Paul, the only GOP contender who opposes the war in Iraq and has sharply criticized President Bush's handling of that conflict and the economy, is doing so poorly in Florida (3 percent so far) tonight and in other mass-voting events: Most people voting in Republican primaries still support Bush.

CNN's analysis of exit poll data showed that two-thirds of voters in today's Florida Republican primary have a positive view of the Bush administration -- this for a president who, among the public at large, has had job approval ratings averaging the low 30s for many months.

The early vote totals posted by Florida officials show there is one clear result: Hillary Clinton is winning by a wide margin in a primary demoted to the equivalent of a massive straw poll by the scheduling dispute between national and Florida Democratic officials. Clinton, according to the state division of election's Web site, has 50percent of the vote to 29percent for Barack Obama and 17 percent for John Edwards.

With John McCain (33.9 percent) and Mitt Romney (33.4 percent) running neck and neck on the Republican side (as indicated in pre-primary polls), the only certain thing appears to be that neither Rudy Giuliani nor Mike Huckabee is making the impact he needed in Florida. Giuliani, who hardly registered in earlier contests and spent most of the campaign so far in Florida, had 14.1 percent, while Huckabee, who needed a strong showing to establish himself as at least a strong regional favorite, had 13.7 percent.

The Republican contest has more tangible meaning for the campaign going forward. While the Jan. 29 GOP primary also broke Republican National Committee scheduling rules, the RNC penalized the state just half of its delegates and permitted its candidates to run full-fledged campaigns. The Democratic National Committee, on the other hand, stripped its Florida affiliate of all its delegates and persuaded the candidates not to actively campaign in Florida.

Exit poll data published on the CNN Web site indicate that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama dominated Saturday's South Carolina Democratic presidential primary across gender and age lines -- although those outcomes are greatly influenced by his overwhelming landslide among black voters, who made up just more than half of the Democratic electorate.

* Obama took 80 percent of the black vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary, to 18 percent for runner-up Hillary Clinton. John Edwards, who won the South Carolina primary in 2004 but finished a distant third Saturday, received minuscule support among black voters.

* Clinton and Edwards roughly tied among white voters at 38 percent, with Obama receiving 24 percent of the white vote.

* Obama has been making a strong effort to appeal to young voters across racial lines, and his strongest support among white voters came from the youngest. Among non-black voters ages 18-29 (5 percent of all exit poll respondents), Obama received the support of 52 percent. He was backed by about two-thirds of all respondents age 18-29, who made up about 14 percent of the electorate.

* There had been a "gender gap" in earlier Democratic presidential nominating events, with women voters more favorable to Clinton and men voters more favorable to Obama. That was not the case in South Carolina, where Obama received support of 54 percent of both the male and female respondents to the exit poll.

* A definite gender gap between the two major parties appeared to be fully in evidence though. The CNN exit poll numbers show 61 percent of the Democratic respondents were women to 39 percent men. This compares to a near-even gender split in the Republican presidential primary held last Saturday, in which 51 percent of exit poll respondents were men and 49 percent were women.

So how much more jazzed were South Carolina voters about participating in Saturday's Democratic presidential primary than last week's Republican primary -- and the Democratic contest in 2004?

Lots more jazzed....

* With just a handful of precincts yet to report in the Associated Press vote tally, almost 532,000 votes had been recorded in the Democratic primary. That greatly exceeded the unofficial vote total of 444,090 in last Saturday's Republican presidential primary, based on results posted on the South Carolina Republican Party.

* The Democratic turnout constituted an increase of roughly 80 percent -- ! -- over the total turnout of 293,843 for the 2004 South Carolina Democratic primary, in which then-North Carolina Sen. (and South Carolina native) John Edwards defeated eventual nominee John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, with black political activist Al Sharpton a distant third.

* The 2008 Republican primary turnout was more than 20 percent less than the turnout for the party's most recent previous competitive presidential primary, in 2000.

* Democratic primary winner Barack Obama had nearly 295,000 votes in nearly complete, unofficial returns... a total that exceeded all the votes cast for all candidates combined in the 2004 primary.

* The total upsurge in turnout was reflected even in the numbers for Edwards, who finished a distant third on Saturday behind Obama and runner-up Hillary Clinton. Edwards' 18 percent vote share for this year's primary was considerably less than half of the 45 percent he took in winning the state's primary in 2004. Yet the roughly 93,500 votes Edwards received this year was down a more modest 30 percent from his 132,660 in 2004. He did so much worse percentage-wise because there were so many more votes cast this time.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards showed no signs Saturday night of giving up his hopes for claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, despite a third-place finish in Saturday's Democratic primary in South Carolina -- the state where he was born and where he won the 2004 Democratic presidential primary over eventual nominee John Kerry.

After stating that he joined Hillary Clinton, the second-place finisher in South Carolina, in congratulating primary winner Barack Obama, Edwards declared, "Now the three of us move on to Feb. 5" -- and the nearly two dozen primaries and caucuses being held on this campaign's "Super Tuesday."

Edwards spent most of the remainder of his primary night speech before supporters in South Carolina emphasizing the main theme of his campaign: that he is running on behalf of poor and economically struggling middle class Americans who he says have been neglected in the nation's politics and policymaking.

"Our campaign from very beginning has been about one central thing: giving voice to millions of Americans who have absolutely no voice in this American democracy," Edwards said.

Edwards continued that for Americans who are worried about health care, living in poverty, concerned about their ability to pay college tuition for their children, are a member of "the forgotten middle class,".or are military veterans who lack sufficient health care or are homeless, "We will speak for you and we will fight for you."

"Your voice will be heard in this campaign and your voice will be heard in America," he said.

Edwards concluded by reiterating that he is in the race to stay. If you are among the millions of Americans who have yet to vote in the nominating campaign, Edwards said, "We will be there with you every single step of the way."

In another powerful star turn as a speaker, Barack Obama told enthusiastic supporters at his South Carolina victory rally Saturday night that his runaway win in the state dispelled any suggestion that his campaign-opening win in the Iowa caucuses was a fluke. He said that after four Democratic contests so far, "We have the most votes, the most delegates and the most diverse coalition of Americans that we have seen in a long, long time," a coalition he described as young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian and Native Americans.

Repeating the central mantra of his campaign, Obama said his campaign is buoyed by Americans who are "tired of business as usual in Washington, hungry for change and ready to believe again."

Obama won in South Carolina after a campaign that included sharp exchanges with the other top-tier candidate in the Democratic nominating fight, Hillary Clinton, who he has cast as the candidate of the Washington establishment.

Obama alluded frequently to the aggressive tactics recently exhibited by the Clinton campaign, though without naming his rival directly. "The kind of change we seek will not come easy," Obama told his supporters. 

With Obama acknowledged that all of the Democratic candidates "share an abiding desire to end the disastrous policies" of the outgoing Bush administration.

But Obama said he is drawing his support from voters who are "looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington," adding that he has been subject to the "same old tactics that divide us and distract us from addressing the problems that we face."

Obama took another oblique shot at former first lady Clibto, saying his campaign is dispelling the notion that qualification to be president is dependent on "longevity and proximity to the White House."

Obama also described the tactics used by his opponents, again without naming names directly, as a form of politics that is "bad for our party, bad for our country. and this is our chance to end it once and for all."

While the outcomes of the Democratic presidential voting events have so far alternated between victories for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, one statistic has been consistent: Democratic voter turnout has consistently been up over other recent years ... while turnout for Republican primaries and caucuses has been off sharply.

The number of voters in Saturday's South Carolina Democratic primary -- won by Barack Obama, with Hillary Clinton second and South Carolina native John Edwards third -- will greatly exceed the turnout for the state's 2004 primary, won by Edwards with eventual nominee John Kerry second and black activist Al Sharpton a distant third.

With three-quarters of precincts reporting in the Associated Press count, about 380,000 were recorded in the Democratic primary. That compared to the total official vote of 294,000 in 2004.

The Democratic turnout numbers will challenge those in the last Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary, in which about 440,000 cast votes -- down more than 20 percent from the turnout in previous competitive GOP primary in the state, held in 2000.

Former President Bill Clinton told a campaign rally for his wife, Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the Feb. 5 primary state of Missouri that Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary Saturday "fair and square." But Clinton, after stating that the nation needs change from the policies of recent years -- a theme that provides the basis for Obama's campaign -- said the nation needs "the right vision, the right plan, the right leadership" to effect that change ... qualities he implied his wife embodies.

The former president continued that he would be supporting Hillary Clinton for president even if they had never been married if he knew what he knows about her "lifetime of working for positive change," calling her "the best candidate for president" that he has ever had the chance to support.

While Barack Obama's victory in the South Carolina primary was fueled largely by the overwhelming support for among black voters who made up about half of the state's Democratic electorate, his apparently wide margin over Hillary Clinton was sealed by his ability to appeal to a sizable minority of the state's white Democratic voters.

An Associated Press analysis of exit poll data found about a quarter of the state's white voters went for Obama, with Clinton and Edwards roughly splitting the remainder. And Obama continues to show strong appeal to younger voters across racial lines: MSNBC reported that he was favored by almost half of younger white male voters who responded to exit polls.

With the networks calling the South Carolina Democratic primary for Barack Obama milli-seconds after the polls closed, Republicans in Florida -- site of the next primary voting on Tuesday -- decided to take advantage of the media's short attention span by leaking word that Florida GOP Gov. Charlie Crist is endorsing Arizona Sen. John McCain for president. This comes on the heels of another key endorsement of McCain, by Florida Sen. Mel Martinez.

Barack Obama may have been bruised a bit by the testy exchanges in which he exchanged with Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the South Carolina primary. But engaging Obama in a prolonged political brawl appears to be a risky strategy for Clinton and her chief surrogate, husband and former President Bill Clinton, given Obama's projected easy victory in that contest.

According to CNN exit poll analysis, about 6 in 10 Democrats who voted in the South Carolina primary said Bill Clinton's campaigning was important in how they ultimately decided to vote. Among those voters, according to CNN, 47 percent went for Barack Obama, 38 percent went for Hillary Clinton and 14 percentvoted for John Edwards.

On the issues who was to blame for the increased nastiness quotient in the campaign, about half of the exit poll repsondents blamed Obama and Hillary Clinton equally. But Clinton took more blame among the respondents who said they held one candidate more responsible: 21 percent pointed the finger at her, to only 6 percent who blamed Obama.

The Clinton camp now faced a crucial choice, with just 10 days to go for the crucial Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries: Do they tone down the attacks on Obama's record and credibility, or ratchet it up?

If you have a thought about which way they will, or should, go, please share it with us by e-mailing to politicscomments@cq.com.

The network anchors barely had the words, "The polls are closed in South Carolina," out of their mouths before projecting Illinois Sen. Barack Obama the winner based on exit polls. That's a clear indication, of course, that the big lead that Obama had opened in pre-primary polls was real.

The early readings from the exit poll demographics showed that Obama galvanized the support of black voters behind his bid to become the first African-American president. This factor virtually guarantee his victory in South Carolina, a state where blacks make up roughly 30 percent of the population and are generally estimated to make up half or more of the Democratic primary electorate in a Southern state where the mainly conservative white electorate has long leaned to the Republican Party

The big competition to watch in the actual vote count, then, is for second place, between New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. (and South Carolina native) John Edwards. Though it has been obvious for some time that an Edwards victory in his native state, which would have thrust him into top tier competition with Clinton and Obama, was not happening, a leapfrog into second past Clinton, or even a close third might be seen as something of a comeback -- considering how low he'd sunk in state and national polling after his so-so showing in the New Hampshire primary and his completely-out-of-the-running performance in last Saturday's Nevada caucuses.

The Associated Press and multiple networks have called the South Carolina Republican primary for Arizona Sen. John McCain. It's an outcome that provides him with a reviving win after following his Jan. 8 win in New Hampshire with losses to ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the Jan. 15 Michigan primary and Saturday afternoon's Nevada caucuses.

But some caution is needed in assessing how big a boost the win will provide McCain, who is winning the state with fewer votes and a smaller vote share than he received in losing to George W. Bush in the key 2000 Republican presidential primary.

A win is a win, and McCain avoided the kind of devastating setback that stanched the momentum he had built by beating Bush in New Hampshire's 2000 primary.

But unlike that 2000 race, in which he faced a single strong candidate presumed to be the party's national front-runner, McCain ran Saturday in a jumbled contest in which six other significant candidates competed for votes, and three of them besides himself took double-digit percentages.

The vote totals speak loudly to the point. In 2000, McCain received nearly 240,000 votes, 42 percent of the total, and was viewed as having suffered a devastating defeat to Bush (who had 53 percent). Tonight, with 91 percent of precincts reporting, McCain had about 134,000 Republican votes, 33 percent of the total, and will claim what undoubtedly will be spun as a big comeback victory.

All told, today';s events lent no more clarity to the no-clear-favorite Republican presidential contest, with Romney winning easily and McCain doing poorly in Nevada, and McCain winning a more narrow victory over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Romney doing poorly in South Carolina.

One conclusion that can be drawn from today's Republican presidential voting events in Nevada and South Carolina is that the jumbled contest still lacks a single candidate who has a reliable national following. If you don't show up and tell GOP primary and caucus goers that you want their vote, you probably aren't going to get it.

Ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the only GOP candidate who campaigned heavily for votes in the Nevada caucuses -- in part because his status as the best-funded Republican candidate makes him the only one who can afford to stage serious campaigns just about everywhere, and because other candidates assumed that the large numbers of Mormons who vote Republican in Nevada would benefit Romney, also a member of that religious faith.

The fact that Romney pretty much had the state to himself was borne out in the results. He romped with 51 percent of the vote. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who beat Romney in the New Hampshire primary and ran a competitive second in Michigan, did little campaigning in Nevada and took just 13 percent -- finishing narrowly behind Texas Rep. Ron Paul, whose maverick libertarian campaign has drawn him enough activist followers to break double-digits in two caucus states (though he has drawn much lower shares in higher-turnout primaries). Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and ex-Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson did worse.

But in order to ensure that Nevada landslide, Romney de-emphasized his campaign in South Carolina, where McCain, Huckabee and Thompson went all out. Not surprisingly, Romney was pulling just 15 percent of the South Carolina vote in late returns, running well behind McCain and Huckabee and narrowly trailing Thompson.

No candidate so far better exemplifies the risks of not being there than former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Though the publicity and name recognition he received for his image of standing strong after his city suffered the terrrorist attack of 9/11 enabled him to lead national Republican preference polls through most of 2007, his left-of-the-rest-of-the-candidates views on social issues contributed to his lag in the early-voting states' pre-primary and pre-caucus polls. So Giuliani has retrenched to Florida -- a state with a number of former residents of his home city and state -- in hopes of shocking the field with a breakthrough win there in the state's Jan. 29 primary, the next event on the Republican calendar.

He will need it, because the impact of this unorthodox and extremely risky strategy have been devastating for his campaigns in the earlier states. On Saturday, he took just 4 percent in Nevada and was running with 2 percent in South Carolina's incomplete returns.

CQ Politics reporter Marie Horrigan notes that former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson's more recently employed skills as an actor may have been on view tonight, as his primary night speech after losing in South Carolina briefly left the impression that he might be quitting the race:

Republican candidate Fred Thompson -- who fell short of the breakthrough performance in South Carolina that many analysts said he'd need -- had national politics watchers on the edge of their seats with a meandering speech to supporters riddled with so many past tense verbs that it sounded like he was about to announce that he was pulling out of the race. But Thompson ended his speech not with a withdrawal statement, but with a pep talk to his backers.

"We will always be bound by a close bond because we have travelled a very special road together for a very special purpose," Thompson said in comments that he began not long after the polls closed at 7 p.m. eastern time. His talk ran several minutes, during which he thanked his supporters and underscored the central tenets of his campaign — low taxes and full federal funding for programs imposed by the federal government on the states; federalism and a market economy; and an opposition to abortion rights.

"Those are the principles that have made us a successful party over the years ... and if people haven’t changed their minds about them we need to convince them we haven’t changed our minds either," he said.

But just as his speech started sounding like a political farewell, however, he wound up the talk with an exhortation: "We’re called upon from time to time to make our own sacrifices ... to make our own contribution. And my friends, that’s what you’ve done. That’s what you’re doing. And I’m so proud to stand with you in that regard, and we’ll always stand strong together in that regard! We’ll always stand strong together!"

Despite the unclear pep talk Saturday night, CNN reported Thompson had no public schedule Sunday and planned to me with advisers Monday — often a sign of an impending withdrawal. But it may be a little harder to tell with Thompson, the lawyer-turned-actor-turned-senator-turned-actor, who ambled into an already well-established Republican candidate field in September and has run a campaign often portrayed as lacking in energy.

Early returns out of South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary on Saturday indicated that Thompson was jockeying with Yankee Mitt Romney for a third-place finish in South Carolina behind Arkansas' Mike Huckabee and Arizona's John McCain, who were battling for the win. After running poorly in the key early events in Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan, Thompson campaigned heavily in South Carolina in hopes of winning and at least grabbing the mantle of the strongest candidate from the South.

CQ's Leah Nylen contributed to this report.

Polls were scheduled to close across South Carolina at 7 p.m. eastern, and returns from today's Republican primaries should start to trickle in soon.

The three Republicans who campaigned most heavily in South Carolina -- Arizona Sen. John McCain, ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson -- all are looking for a win that would both boost their campaigns and offset former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's easy win this afternoon in the caucuses held in Nevada (which he had pretty much all to himself).

The Democrats also caucused in Nevada today, with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton winning by a close but clear margin over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

The South Carolina Democrats did not join their Republican counterparts in holding their primary today. Rather they will hold a primary next Saturday, Jan. 26, which now looms huge for Democrat John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator and 2004 vice presidential nominee, who ran a mediocre third in New Hampshire and then had a terrible showing in Nevada today. Edwards was born in South Carolina.

The Michigan Republican Party tonight put out a press release that congratulated ex-Massachusetts Gov. (and Michigan native son) Mitt Romney on his win; hailed the very early primary's impact in focusing attention on the auto industry-dependent state's economic woes; and detailing how the state's 60 delegates will be allocated.

Only problem is that 60 number. The bipartisan decision by Michigan policymakers to schedule its primary for Jan. 15 -- in violation of national party rules barring delegate allocation events before Feb. 5 -- spurred the Republican National Committee to strip the state party of half its delegates (the Democratic National Committee was even more draconian, stripping its state affiliate of all its delegates for breaking the Feb. 5 scheduling threshold for most states).

Leaders of both parties in Michigan have contended throughout the dispute that they expect their delegates to be fully restored by the time of the national conventions late this summer -- if only because Michigan is expected to be a "battleground state" in the November general election.

But in the meantime, the Michigan Republicans officially have only 30 delegates to distribute, not 60.

Hillary Clinton's victory in tonight's Michigan Democratic primary may have more asterisks next to it than Barry Bonds' home run record. The decision by the Democratic National Committee to strip Michigan of its entire delegation over a scheduling dispute means Clinton did not add any delegates to her total. And her decision to leave her name on the state's disputed Jan. 15 ballot -- unlike her main competitors for the nomination, Barack Obama and John Edwards -- gave her a win virtually by default.

Still, the establishment Democrats supporting Clinton in Michigan turned out enough votes to give her a clear victory and spare her from an embarrassingly close contest with the "uncommitted" ballot line.

And you can't accuse the Clinton campaign of underplaying the victory, even under the peculiar circumstances.

According to a press release by Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, "Tonight Michigan Democrats spoke loudly for a new beginning. You spoke out for an economy that would honor the middle class, not punish it. You spoke out for a President who will fight to create good paying jobs at a time when so many families are struggling to make ends meet. You spoke out for an end to the war in Iraq. You spoke out for a quality, affordable health care system that works for all Americans."

"For that, we thank you," Solis continued, concluding, "Your voices matter. And as President, Hillary Clinton will not only keep listening, but will make sure your voice is always heard."

The economy was the biggest issue to Republican voters in economically beleaguered Michigan, shaken by the domestic auto industry's woes. Mitt Romney -- whose father George headed a Detroit auto company before serving as governor of Michigan -- pronounced that he would shape federal tax and regulatory policy to revive the carmakers' fortunes. John McCain, whose supporters revere his "straight talk," took a much different tack, telling Michigan that global economic change meant many of the job Michigan has lost aren't coming back, and that the state needed to re-engineer its economy for the future.

Romney won the primary, and in his victory speech Tuesday night gave credit to his own more upbeat approach. "Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism," Romney said.

But McCain, in a primary night statement in which he congratulated Romney (while duly noting that the victor is a "native son" of Michigan), held to his economic message and said he was saying what he feels is true rather than what voters might want to hear. 

McCain said, "I am as committed now as I have ever been to making sure that no state, whether its Michigan or South Carolina or anywhere in this blessed country, is left behind in the global economy. But that global economy is here to stay and it is, by its nature, constantly changing. To compete more successfully in it, we must better prepare American workers and students to seize its opportunities. That is how we will build a stronger and more prosperous America.

"That is what I told the people of Michigan," McCain continued. "And I don't believe I could have honestly told them anything else."

Ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney turned to the state where he was born and where his late father George Romney was governor to steady his stumbling campaign after season-opening losses in Iowa and New Hampshire... and he got what he needed.

Every contest in this jumbled Republican campaign seems to produce a new candidate teetering on the brink. It was Romney last week, after he lost to John McCain in New Hampshire. Now McCain will be seen as the candidate having much to prove in the key upcoming contests in Nevada and South Carolina (this Saturday) and Florida on Jan. 29 (two weeks from today).

Although McCain's camp can spin that the Arizona senator made it close on Romney's (original) home turf, he did not do nearly as well as he did in winning the state over George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP presidential campaign. And he fell short in a state where independents can vote in the Republican primary, and did heavily for the senator eight years ago. Now the primary schedule turns mainly to states where GOP participation is limited to registered Republicans, and where he will be challenged to prove he can win among party base voters -- including many who in the past have expressed frustration with McCain's effort to position himself as a maverick Republican.

So here's what is at stake in South Carolina Saturday:

Romney: Must prove he can win somewhere besides Michigan.

McCain: Must prove he can compete in a Republican-only contest.

Mike Huckabee: The former Arkansas governor, who finished third in Michigan with support largely from evangelical Christians concentrated in the western part of the state, must battle Romney for the conservative mantle, and ex-Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson for primacy as the candidate of the South.

Thompson: A total non-factor so far, the Southern-drawling Thompson needs a big showing in South Carolina to prove that he can at least gain footing as a strong regional candidate.

Rudy Giuliani: Must stay in Florida and hope against hope that his decision to focus on the slew of upcoming big state primaries survives the pitiful vote shares he has been receiving in the early voting states.

Ron Paul: After another apparent single-digit showing in Michigan, it's time for the Texas libertarian's fervent core followers to prove that there's any mass behind his movement.

With Hillary Clinton the only major candidate on the Michigan Democratic ballot -- a convoluted result of the scheduling dispute between the national and state party organizations -- tonight's contest is Clinton vs. Uncommitted... or Clinton vs. Un-Clinton. Early county results show Clinton winning widely, though by widely varying amounts, as reported by CQ Politics' Greg Giroux....

The following are statewide numbers as posted on the Detroit News Web site:

Very early and selective, but these county percentages show Romney leading McCain in a number of places...

Oakland (27 of 570 precincts) -- Romney 48, McCain 28, Huckabee 9

Kent (23 of 267) -- Romney 37, McCain 28, Huckabee 19

Macomb (48 of 431) -- Romney 41, McCain 26, Huckabee 15

From CQ Politics' Greg Giroux....

Seventeen of the 267 precincts have reported in Kent County (Grand Rapids), and Romney is leading McCain by 36% to 27%. The 20% for Mike Huckabee, albeit in early returns, suggest that he had some success with his relatively low-budget effort to target the large evangelical Christian portion of the western Michigan GOP electorate.

For historic perspective when tonight's numbers start coming in .... from CQ Politics senior reporter Greg Giroux...

Some exit poll data is starting to be hashed about by the Associated Press and the nets... No candidate numbers, no big surprises.... CQ Politics' Lauren Phillips collected the following highlights...

* About 70 percent of the participants in today's Michigan voting identified themselves as Republicans. Democratic turnout was greatly depressed by the state party's feud with the Democratic National Committee, which stripped Michigan of all its delegates for going with the Jan. 15 primary (breaking the national party rule setting Feb. 5 as the start date for most states).

* More than half the Republican voters said the economy is the key issue, a far greater proportion than said so in the Iowa caucus electorate on Jan. 3. Michigan has been suffering deep economic problems driven by the downturn in the fortunes of the domestic auto industry.

Meanwhile, local news outlets say turnout was light in Detroit and Grand Rapids, but was relatively heavy in the Lansing area, home to the very politically active Michigan State University academic community (yeah, Lauren and I are MSU grads).

Thought I'd kick off the Michigan primary blog with some comments that suggest that anger over that state's struggling economy is not just a blue-collar phenomenon.

While this is an admittedly small focus group -- a college friend who is a self-described independent and his co-worker who is a self-described Republican -- both are financial industry professionals from Grand Rapids who say they haven't heard what they want to hear from the presidential candidates about Michigan's economic woes ... so much so that neither voted in today's primary.

If you are a Michigan resident and have thoughts you would like to share, please send us an e-mail at politicscomments@cq.com.

The independent's view:

"As someone very interested in state and national politics, I feel ambivalent at best and frustrated at worst with the quality of candidates and quality of debate on the part of both parties. I will not bother to vote today. The Democrats offer nothing today because they screwed up the process of trying to leap-frog other states [on the presidential nominating calendar]. The Republican field doesn’t excite me either as an independent voter. Too much back biting and not enough backbone.

"Our economy is the poor man of the United States and that giant sucking sound, to borrow a phrase from Ross Perot, is the exodus of college graduates to other states and especially the city of Chicago. Newt Gingrich was on The Today Show this morning and said that 40% of college grads coming out of Michigan State University and that other place in Ann Arbor will head out of state.

"The media focuses way too much on the horse-race atmosphere and breathlessly reports on polls and what they mean in advance of an actual vote. Chris Matthews got frustrated on 'Hardball' last night and asked a guest something like, 'Why can’t we figure out in advance who is going to win this thing.' Chris, that’s why people actually get out and vote and why we don’t elect people based on polling data in advance of an election. Please, let’s not go overboard on predicting who is going to win the election when it’s only the bottom of the first inning.'

The Republican's view:

“From Michigan’s standpoint today, Bill Clinton did have it right in 1992 – ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ We have a mess on our hands in this state. Too much time is spent on social issues and not enough on fixing the economic problems in this state. I won’t be voting today.”

Hillary Clinton found a new political ally in New Hampshire: the expectations game, which had betrayed her badly just five days earlier in Iowa.

Who would have thought that Clinton -- former first lady, New York senator, front-runner in the national polls -- would be able to declare a low-single-digit victory margin over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary as a glorious comeback? But she was able to do so because so much of the post-Iowa punditry portrayed her loss there not as a setback, but the beginning of the end of her campaign.

This was reinforced by dozens of news reports from numerous outlets that focused on the momentum that the charismatic, rhetorically gifted Obama was generating on the New Hampshire campaign trail -- and polling that was unusually uniform in missing the mark. Not only did most surveys show Obama winning, but it appeared on primary eve that he would cruise to a comfortable margin.

One of the hottest stories on the news and political Web throughout the day Tuesday was of an imminent major shakeup in Clinton's campaign, which would come on the heels of her virtually certain loss in New Hampshire.

Obama remains a formidable opponent, and Clinton faces some serious risks ahead. She almost certainly will net a default win in Michigan's bollixed Jan. 15 primary -- she's the only major candidate on the ballot in a contest banished by the Democratic National Committee because it violates national party scheduling rules. But the next round after that is the caucus event in Nevada on Jan. 19; the relatively low turnout for caucuses, as Iowa proved, makes establishment candidate Clinton potentially more vulnerable to Obama and his highly motivated activist backers.

Then the campaign moves to South Carolina on Jan. 26, where she has significant organizational support, but where Obama may appeal strongly to the large African-American Democratic constituency, and where former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, born in South Carolina, will be striving to rescue his campaign after a distant third-place finish in New Hampshire.

With different candidates winning Iowa and New Hampshire in both parties, it might just be best to expect the unexpected in the upcoming contests.

Hillary Clinton -- her relatively narrow win over Barack Obama magnified by expectations that had shifted strongly against her after her loss last Thursday in the Iowa caucuses -- embraced victory in a speech before a large gathering of supporters.

"I come tonight with a very full heart and 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 said. "I felt like we all spoke from our hearts and I am so gratified that you responded."

Clinton continued, "For all the ups and downs of this campaign, you helped remind everyone that politics isn’t a game. This campaign is about people. Too many have been invisible for too long. Well, you are not invisible to me. The oil companies, the drug companies, the health insurance companies, the predatory student loan companies have had eight years of a president who stands up for them. It's time we had a president who stands up for you.

The polls and the convention wisdom was wrong: The momentum that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama seemed to build with his upset Iowa caucus victory over New York Sen. Hillary Clinton did not deliver him a victory in New Hampshire, no less the comfortable triumph suggested by the final pre-primary polls. But Obama delivered a confident and eloquent -- if far less bouyant -- address to supporters in Nashua, New Hampshire Tuesday night.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson gave no indication Tuesday night that he plans to give up his White House hopes, even though he finished well off the pace in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, as he did in last Thursday's Iowa caucuses. He pointed his campaign toward the Jan. 19 caucuses in Nevada, where he must at least finish in the top tier of candidates and establish himself as a presence in his home region.

Hillary Clinton continued to cling to a small lead over Barack Obama (39 percent to 36 percent) at 9:20 p.m. eastern time, with just more than one-third of Democratic precincts reporting, and Nashua -- New Hampshire's second most-populous city after Manchester -- is helping her. Clinton is leading Obama by 20 percentage points there, 49 percent to 29 percent.

Obama has prevailed in Concord, the state capital, though.

We're starting to see some returns reported from Coos County, which is in extreme northern New Hampshire and which has the state's lowest median income and highest unemployment rate. As expected, Hillary Clinton is doing well in these economically struggling areas. Clinton won the town of Stratford, one of New Hampshire's poorest communities, and also in Shelburne. Bill Clinton carried Coos County in the 1992 Democratic primary, which revived his then-flagging campaign that took him to the Democratic nomination and the White House.

Barack Obama prevailed, though, in at least one northern community: tiny Dixville Notch, which maintained a tradition by casting its votes at 12:01 a.m. today.

The references are not so subtle reminders of one of Romney's key resume items: his stewardship of the 2002 Winter Olympics, which the wealthy businessman was invited to run after a series of corruption scandals tarnished the preparations for the games. His success and prominence in that role helped boost him greatly in his successful run for governor of Massachusetts

The Michigan primary a week from today now looms large as Mitt Romney's "must win" moment -- given his defeat today in New Hampshire by Arizona Sen. John McCain, whose past popularity in the state (where he won big over George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP primary) had pundits calling New Hampshire his win-or-fade contest for 2008.

McCain and Romney (or Romney and McCain) appear the two front-runners for the Jan. 15 Michigan primary. Romney was born in Detroit, and his father, George Romney, a leading auto executive, served as the state's governor. But McCain -- who also defeated Bush in Michigan eight years ago -- will again by a tough customer for Romney, in part because Michigan Republicans allow independents to vote in their primary.

McCain, who has cultivated an image as something of a straight-talking maverick in GOP ranks, garnered large numbers of independent voters in both of those big 2000 upsets, and exit polls in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary indicate that unaffiliated voters again made up a big part of his base in that state.

We're going to have to wait for some more returns before passing judgment about the solidity of Hillary Clinton's early lead in the vote count (40 percent to 35 percent with 40 of 301 precincts reporting at 8:30 p.m., according to AP returns posted on the Concord Monitor Web site).

From CQ Politics' Greg Giroux: The precincts that have reported so far are largely in middle-class and working-class areas that were expected to vote for Clinton. But Obama is expected to win in upper-income and better-educated areas, a presumption based in large part on the Iowa caucus results and polling.

Take, for instance, the cities of Rochester and Somersworth, middle-class constituencies on the Maine border. Clinton is 10 points ahead of Obama in Rochester and 16 points ahead in Somersworth. Both cities voted for Bill Clinton in the 1992 primary, which he lost to Paul Tsongas but performed well enough to give his campaign a major boost that made him the self-proclaimed "Comeback Kid." If Hillary Clinton is to become the second Comeback Kid, she'll have to continue racking up big margins in locales such as Manchester that offset expected Obama victories in locales such as Concord, the state capital, the university towns of Hanover and Durham, and some upscale communities at or near the Massachusetts border.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, is running fourth in New Hampshire, and though he has a mere 9 percent in early returns, he appears to have skirted the political disaster he courted by essentially ceding the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary to focus on the big delegate prizes up for vote in coming weeks.

So when Giuliani took the stage early in the New Hampshire vote count, he gave his best impression of a bouyant outlook to the cheers of supporters.

"We've got a lot of work to do, we've got a lot of work that lies ahead. This is just the beginning. Think of it as a kickoff, this is a kickoff of what is going to be a very long and very tough game," Giuliani said. He later added, "Maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to say the groundwork we made here was not just the groundwork to the nomination, but the groundwork to the presidency."

"This race is a wide open race," Giuliani said. "We were prepared for this from the very beginning."

Giuliani holds a narrow lead for fourth place in early returns over Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian maverick whose fervent core of followers predicted big things for him in a state that has large numbers of indepedent voters. And Giuliani had a great night compared to the other major candidate who took a pass on New Hampshire: Fred Thompson, the actor and ex-Tennessee senator who spent Tuesday campaigning for the Jan. 19 primary in South Carolina, is pulling about 1 percent in New Hampshire.

John McCain's solid lead in the Republican primary is broad-based. He is leading runner-up Mitt Romney in nearly all of the handful of jurisdictions that have reported some or all of their unofficial returns. McCain has the early edge in more populous communities like Manchester, Dover, Keene, Portsmouth and Rochester. McCain won all of these jurisdictions in 2000, when he defeated George W. Bush by 18 percentage points.

Romney defeated McCain in the small town of Chester, an upper-income area east of Manchester that McCain narrowly won in 2000 over Bush.

The following is the Associated Press' report on what issues and factors drove voters in today's New Hampshire primary:

FEELINGS ON PRESIDENT BUSH: Democratic primary voters felt a lot more negative about Bush than Republican voters felt positive:

— Fully two-thirds of Democratic primary voters said they feel angry about the Bush administration and nearly all the rest said they were dissatisfied, but not angry.

— Among Republican primary voters, fewer than one in 10 were enthusiastic and four in 10 were satisfied but not enthusiastic. About a third were dissatisfied and two in 10 GOP primary voters were angry about the Bush administration.

TIME OF DECISION: Nearly half of voters in each primary said they decided in the past week which candidate to support.

GENDER: As usual in presidential primaries, women voters predominated in the Democratic contest and men in the Republican.

IDEOLOGY: A little more than half of Republican primary voters called themselves conservative and about as many Democratic primary voters called themselves liberal.

FEELINGS ABOUT THE CANDIDATES: Eight in 10 Democratic voters strongly favor their candidate, compared to two-thirds of Republican primary voters.

ISSUES:

— A third of Republican primary voters said the economy is the most important issue facing the country, and they split evenly among the other three choices they were given — immigration, Iraq and terrorism.

— Given three choices, a little more than a third of Democratic primary voters picked the economy, with Iraq and health care not far behind.

IRAQ WAR:

— Democratic primary voters were pretty evenly split between wanting all U.S. troops withdrawn as soon as possible and setting a timetable to withdraw them gradually. Only about 5 percent wanted to keep troops in Iraq “as long as needed.”

— Asked a different question in the survey, a third of Republican primary voters strongly approve of the Iraq war and at least as many somewhat approve.

WORRIES:

— Three quarters of Democratic primary voters were worried there will be another major terrorist attack on the United States and virtually all were worried about the direction of the nation’s economy in the next few years. Republican primary voters were a little more worried about a terrorist attack and a bit less worried about the economy.

Democratic primary voters viewed the current economy much more pessimistically, with nine in 10 saying it’s not so good or poor. Republican voters were split between positive and negative views of the economy.

PRIMARIES TOO SOON? About four in 10 voters in each contest said the presidential primaries around the country are being held too early this year.

From partial samples in surveys Tuesday in 50 precincts around New Hampshire for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. The surveys included 1,296 Democratic primary voters and 905 Republican primary voters. The sampling error margin was plus or minus 4 percentage points for the Democratic primary survey, 5 points for the Republican.

CQ Politics New Hampshire reporter Rachel Kapochunas notes that the way-above-average turnout for today's primary in that state was too much of a good thing....

New Hampshire voters reportedly turned out in record high numbers for Tuesday's primary... maybe a little too high. Some polling places reportedly ran low on ballots, especially those for the Democratic contest, long before the polls closed. CNN reported that the office of New Hampshire's Secretary of State sent additional ballots to polling locations in communities such as Hampton Falls, Portsmouth, Keene, Hudson and Pelham. 

Here are some interesting findings from the final Gallup pre-primary poll of likely voters in the New Hampshire Republican primary.

[Disclaimer 1: This was a PRE-PRIMARY poll, not an exit poll.]

[Disclaimer 2: It was a poll taken while a lot of New Hampshire voters said they still hadn't made a final decision on their vote. So you're advised to use caution in extrapolating a likely outcome in today's voting from this info. We do...]

* No Electability Edge for New Hampshire GOP Front-Runners. Gallup reports that Republican voters are equally likely to perceive Arizona Sen. John McCain and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as having the best chance of beating the Democratic nominee in November.

Here are some interesting findings from the final Gallup pre-primary polls of likely voters in the New Hampshire primary.

[Disclaimer 1: This was a PRE-PRIMARY poll, not an exit poll.]

[Disclaimer 2: It was a poll taken while a lot of New Hampshire voters said they still hadn't made a final decision on their vote. So you're advised to use caution in extrapolating a likely outcome in today's voting from this info. We do...]

* Electable Obama? Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as the candidate perceived by Democrats and Democratic leaners as having the best chance of beating the Republican in November. He surpassed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- the former first lady and clear national front-runner prior to her defeat in the Iowa caucuses -- who was considered by voters as the most electable Democrat in polling throughout 2007.

 * A Change Man. Gallup reports, "In a year when 'change' has become the word candidates most want to be associated with, Obama appears to have convinced New Hampshire voters that he is the candidate most likely to possess new ideas to help solve the country's problems." The survey showed that 51 percent of likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters viewed him as the leading change agent in the Democratic field, with Clinton (19 percent) and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (18 percent) virtually tied behind him.

* Ms. Fix-It: Despite Obama's contention that he is uniquely capable of reaching across party lines and making progress on the nation's problems, Clinton retains a wide lead over him in the Gallup poll -- by 49 percent to 25 percent -- as the candidate best capable of getting things done in Washington.

CQ Politics senior reporter Greg Giroux provides the following reminder of some of the key differences between last Thursday's Iowa caucuses and Tuesday's New Hampshire primary -- and why the latter could produce a different result (at least on the Republican side):

1. New Hampshire has a primary, not a caucus-voting event. The Iowa caucuses were essentially meetings of party activists to name their presidential candidate preferences and conduct more mundane party business. The New Hampshire primary will be carried out more like a general election, with voters heading to polling stations to cast ballots in private booths. A primary attracts a larger share of a state's registered voters than does a caucus, in part because the latter takes much more of a time commitment and tends to attract party insiders and activists.

2. Independents' Day: Self-described independents -- who are allowed by state law to participate in either the Democratic or Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire -- will comprise a larger share of the vote in that state than in the Iowa caucuses, which have long been dominated by active members of the Democratic and Republican parties. According to exit polls of the 2000 Democratic and Republican primaries in New Hampshire, about 40 percent of voters described themselves as independents. This helped Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran that year as a "maverick" Republican, score a stunning upset over Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the choice of the national Republican Party establishment (who rebounded after New Hampshire to win the GOP nomination and the general election). McCain is running again this year and once more is staging a serious bid to win in New Hampshire, where he is expected to do better among independents on Tuesday than his chief competitor, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. But one of the biggest worries for the McCain camp is the potential appeal to independents of a leading Democratic candidate, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is running on the theme of political change. In 2000, neither Vice President Al Gore nor former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley - the contenders for the Democratic nomination - had special appeal to New Hampshire's independents, giving McCain plenty of latitude to court that constituency.

3. New Hampshire is much wealthier overall than Iowa. According to a 2006 Census Bureau survey, New Hampshire's median household income was $59,683, the sixth-highest in the nation and well above the $44,491 median household income for Iowa, which ranked 34th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. (The median household income for the United States in 2006 was $48,451.) Obama did particularly well among Iowa Democratic caucus attendees who reported higher incomes.

4. This relates to the third point, but New Hampshire residents as a whole have higher levels of formal education than Iowa residents. Well-educated New Hampshirites abound along the state's border with Massachusetts - from which a number of them moved in recent years -- and in academic communities such as Hanover, home to Dartmouth College in the western part of the state, and the University of New Hampshire in Durham, which is located in the southeastern part of the state. If the patterns from Iowa hold, these elite communities should favor Obama, who prospered among well-educated Iowa caucus-goers, while voters with less formal education in New Hampshire are more likely to back either New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

5. "Religious right" voters - an important Republican constituency nationally -- carry less sway in New Hampshire than they do in Iowa. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a social conservative and former Southern Baptist preacher, was propelled to victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses by overwhelming support among self-described evangelical voters, who comprised three of five voters in that contest and who backed Huckabee by 46 percent to 19 percent over Romney. The percentage of New Hampshire primary voters who are evangelicals is much lower, which explains why Huckabee will likely finish no better than third in New Hampshire, behind front-runners McCain and Romney. In the 2000 Republican primary, just 20 percent of voters described themselves as "born again" or evangelical: McCain ran even with Bush among this subset and dominated Bush among voters who said they were not born-again or evangelicals.

Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden confirmed his withdrawal from the Democratic presidential contest in a speech to supporters following Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, in which he performed poorly.

"There is nothing sad about tonight. We are so incredibly proud of you all," Biden said, according to the Associated Press. "So many of you have sacrificed for me and I am so indebted to you. I feel no regret. I ain't goin' away."

The latter remark hinted at the fact that Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, kept open his bid for a seventh Senate term in 2008 even as he staged his longshot presidential campaign. Biden is heavily favored to win re-election.

CNN has reported that Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. will quit the Democratic presidential contest after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses. If correct, Biden will join Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, who confirmed his withdrawal in a caucus night statement to supporters.

A Biden pullout would mark his second, and likely final, brief brush with presidential politics. In 1987, as a 45-year-old rising political star, Biden appeared poised to stage a competitive bid for the 1988 Democratic nomination, until accusations that parts of a major speech he delivered were plagiarized undermined his campaign.

Biden this time relied heavily on his experience in a Senate career dating to 1973, and particularly emphasized his heavy focus on foreign policy issues. But despite his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his singular plan to divide Iraq into three separate enclaves for the nation's predominant ethnic groups, Biden's fundraising and poll numbers lagged badly. He received fewer than 1 percent of the county convention delegates according by the Iowa caucuses.

Biden has always had a fallback option in 2008 politics though. Even as he ran his longshot presidential campaign, Biden continued preparing for a bid for a seventh Senate term -- for which he is overwhelmingly favored.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama greeted his victory in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses with the confidence of a bona fide contender and the oratorical flair that first launched him onto the national scene in his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic convention.

Obama delivered a stemwinder speech that went beyond the usual thank-yous to the local voters and aimed to sustain his momentum into the New Hampshire primary in just five days. Projecting the aura of a front-runner, Obama told enthusiastic supporters, "You can look back in pride and say, 'This was the moment it all began.'"

Hillary Clinton's chief rivals for the Democratic nomination, Iowa winner Barack Obama and runner-up John Edwards, have been running as candidates capable of cleaning up Washington and breaking the hold that "special interests" have on the government. And they have cast the New York senator, former first lady -- and front-runner in national Democratic polls -- as the kind of establishment politicians that the nation's many dissatisfied voters should reject.

Yet Clinton has insisted throughout her campaign that she has fought for constructive change during her whole career AND has the political experience her opponents lack to make that change happen. And despite her unexpected third place showing in Iowa, she sounded those themes again in an upbeat caucus night statement to supporters.

"This is a great night for Democrats. We have seen an unprecedented turnout here in Iowa and that is good news. Today we are sending a clear message that we will have change, and that change will be a Democratic president in the White House in 2009," said Clinton, who said of the party's field, "Together, we have made the case for change."

But Clinton also returned to the attribute she and her supporters say as a key asset: experience. "What is most important now is that as we go on with this contest that we keep focused on these two issues ... How will we win in November 2008 by nominating a candidate who will be able to go the distance and who will be the best president on day one. I am ready for that contest."

Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, who was never able to convert his long congressional service into a strong rationale for running for president, will quit the presidential campaign after barely registering in the Iowa caucus vote count -- this according to the Associated Press and other sources.

It may be said that no candidate has ever made more personal adjustments for less result in the Iowa caucuses. Never able to rise much above 1 percent in national Democratic polls, Dodd put all of his chips on Iowa and moved himself, his wife and their two small children into an apartment in Des Moines so he could campaign there 24/7. But the caucus night tally accorded him a minuscule 0.02 percent of the delegates to the upcoming Iowa county conventions -- behind the 0.13 percent for "uncommitted."

Ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee grabbed the spotlight by sprinting to the front of a jumbled Republican candidate field in the Iowa caucuses. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who invested heavily in campaign advertising and organizing in hopes of winning the kickoff event, fell short of early expectations but still finished second -- which likely was enough to keep him competitive in the big contest five days from now: the primary in New Hampshire, which neighbors his home state.

So how did the rest of the field fare -- and what does it mean for them going forward?

Arizona Sen. John McCain: normally a third-place finish with 14 percent of the vote wouldn't be much to write home about. But McCain -- who received just 5 percent in the state's 2000 caucuses after criticizing federal subsides for ethanol, a corn-based fuel that's big in the state -- did much better this time, even though he played down the state again and focused most of his attention on New Hampshire. This appears to reflect McCain's recent gains in national Republican poll, founded in part on his image as a hero POW in the Vietnam War and his outspoken support for the Iraq troop surge policy carried out by President Bush. The Iowa result suggests that McCain could again be a big factor in New Hampshire, where he upset Bush in the 2000 primary.

Ex-Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson: 13 percent and a close fourth-place finish might have been seen as a respectable presidential campaign debut for the lawyer-turned-actor-turned-senator-turned-actor. But his campaign so far has been plodding, and he certainly hasn't emerged as the galvanizing force among conservatives hoped for by some who saw him as the next Ronald Reagan. Iowa almost certainly doesn't knock Thompson out of the box, but he needs some strong performances soon -- and the South Carolina Republican primary on Jan. 19 starts to loom huge.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul: Paul's strongly stated libertarian views and his standout position as the only Republican candidate who is strongly opposed to the Iraq war gained him 10 percent of the Iowa vote. But that hardly suggests the kind of mass movement that his fervent corps of supporters contends is developing behind his campaign. Especially given the extraordinary fundraising success that placed substantial financial resources at Paul's disposal.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Giuliani early on decided that the Iowa Republican caucuses, typically dominated by voters with socially conservative views, would be a bad bet for him, given his past strong support for abortion rights and gay rights, and he put his efforts into bigger and later-voting states. Even so, the fact that Giuliani was able to draw support from only 4 percent of Iowa caucus goers raises a big question about whether his reputation for strength and determination in leading his city after the 9/11 attacks is enough to sustain a presidential campaign.

California Rep. Duncan Hunter: This earnest and staunch conservative, little known to voters outside his Southern California base, has had great difficulty explaining why he should be president. Getting less than 1 percent of the total Republican vote will make that even harder.

We have some numbers on just how huge the Democratic turnout was in the Iowa caucuses: According to Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman Carrie Giddins, about 218,000 individuals attended Democratic caucuses, with a little more than 93 percent of the vote counted and Barack Obama comfortably ahead of John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton. That compared to the estimated 125,000 who turned out for the 2004 Democratic caucuses, in which John Kerry defeated Edwards, Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt.

Latest Democratic returns showed Obama with 37.36 percent, Edwards with 29.97 percent and Clinton with 29.45 percent.

Self-proclaimed political outsiders, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee, won their party's caucuses in Iowa Tuesday night, and their wins appear to reflect a public mood seen repeated in public opinion polls: Most Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track and are dissatisfied with how Washington's policy makers are addressing major problems. So the theme of political change, voiced strongly by Obama and Huckabee, is attracting a number of voters.

Will this become a trend as the campaign moves from an Iowa caucus event that draws a high percentage of political activists (even with tonight's apparent record turnout) to primaries with their larger and broader based electorate? Or will candidates regarded as more establishment figures -- such as New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- regain their footing? Some clues will be afforded very soon... in the New Hampshire primary five days from now.

CQ Politics senior reporter Greg Giroux found Barack Obama's strategy of appealing strongly to college students appears to be playing a role in his projected victory in tonight's Iowa caucuses.

CNN, Fox News have projected Illinois Sen. Barack Obama the winner of a close three-way Democratic caucus contest, with 2004 vp candidate John Edwards and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton neck and neck for second.

Obama's charisma and message that he can be a greater catalyst for political change than his opponents have enabled him to emerge as a very strong contender in his bid to become the nation's first African-American president. And his win definitively punctured any thought that Clinton, the former first lady, is the inevitable Democratic nominee -- even though she has maintained a sizable lead in national polls even as the heavily concentrated campaign efforts by Obama and Edwards in Iowa thrust her into a tight race there.

Edwards again ran strongly enough to compete in Iowa, as he did in 2004, when he was the runner-up to winner (and eventual nominee) John Kerry. But the Iowa outcome raised the stakes for Edwards in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, as Obama's win has at least temporarily positioned him at the leading alternative to Clinton.

Ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, declared the GOP winner by several networks, is carrying just less than a third of the total GOP caucus vote, but has a comfortable edge over ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in second place. The following results are as posted on the ABC News Web site.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has nosed into the lead in the Democratic caucus count, but his contest with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and 2004 veep candidate John Edwards remains intensely close. The party's other hopefuls are barely registering.

Senator Barack Obama : 33.88%

Senator John Edwards : 31.84%

Senator Hillary Clinton : 31.60%

Governor Bill Richardson : 1.68%

Senator Joe Biden : 0.93%

Senator Chris Dodd : 0.05%

Uncommitted : 0.03%

Precincts Reporting: 889 of 1781

(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)

CNN and Fox News have projected former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee the winner of the Iowa Republican caucuses. If these projections hold up, the victory will confirm Huckabee's startling rush into the top tier of the GOP field -- a surge built largely on a natural affinity that the one-time Southern Baptist preacher was able to build with fellow religious conservatives in Iowa, many of whom felt they lacked a champion in the rest of the GOP field.

CNN projects former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will finish second after leading in polls during much of the Iowa pre-caucus campaign. While hardly a fatal setback for his campaign, it will raised the stakes for Romney next Tuesday in the primary held in New Hampshire, which neighbors his home state. While Huckabee may get some bounce out of his Iowa win, he may be held back by the fact that "religious right" voters make up a smaller share of the GOP primary electorate there. As a result, Romney's toughest competition in New Hampshire appears to come from Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has gained some ground after a stumbling start to his campaign. McCain scored a big upset over GOP front-runner George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary.

How's this for close.... still way early though....

Senator John Edwards : 32.53%
Senator Barack Obama : 32.47%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 32.25%
Governor Bill Richardson : 1.85%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.76%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.10%
Uncommitted : 0.03%
Precincts Reporting: 486 of 1781

From the Iowa Democratic Party site...

CQ Politics' Greg Giroux provides another caveat in following the Democratic vote count: Because of the arcane way in which the Democrats reported the results, the percentages given for each candidate are not necessarily a one-to-one ratio with the support they received from individual caucus participants.

"The Democrats' 15 percent viability threshold to elect delegates to the county conventions can work to inflate the totals of front-running candidates and understate the support for second-tier candidates. That is because caucus-goers who are initially aligned with non-viable candidates will realign with viable groups. In the 76 Democratic precincts that reported their results by 8:30 eastern time, John Edwards has 37 percent of the estimated state delegate strength, compared to 30 percent for Hillary Rodham Clinton and 28 percent for Barack Obama. Joseph R. Biden Jr. has 2 percent and Bill Richardson and Christopher J. Dodd have about 1 percent apiece. There are 1,781 precincts statewide, so we have a long way to go."

It's also worth noting that the lack at the moment of any recorded percentages for Dennis J. Kucinich and Mike Gravel doesn't mean that absolutely nobody went to caucus for them -- just that they haven't had enough support to earn any county convention delegates.

CQ Politics senior reporter Greg Giroux reminds that the two parties report the Iowa caucus results quite differently.

Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. The Republican process is straightforward; caucus-goers will cast secret ballots in a straw poll, so the vote percentages that are reported reflect each candidate's total vote as a share of the countywide vote. They then will proceed with the nitty-gritty business of selecting delegates to the GOP county conventions that will be the next (and widely ignored) step in Iowa's multi-tiered process.

Leave it to the Democrats to come up with a much more complex system. Their caucus results will be released in terms of State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs), which project each candidate's delegate strength at the June 2008 state convention. The Democratic caucus-goers will not directly cast ballots for presidential candidates; rather, they will divide up into candidate preference groups that generally require 15 percent of caucus attendees of to elect delegates to county conventions in March. The SDEs are based on the number of county convention delegates the candidates earn in tonight's precinct caucuses.

This public service announcement will not be repeated.

CNN reports that a poll of Iowa voters as they headed into the caucuses indicated a close race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side, with John Edwards trailing, and a close contest between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee among the Republican candidates. MSNBC reports similar results. These are unofficial readings, of course, that may or may not reflect the vote counts inside the meeting rooms.

After months of intense stumping and millions of dollars of campaign expenditures lavished on a single state, the candidates have now officially done all they can to try to persuade a relative handful of politically active Iowa citizens to give a big boost to their hopes of being nominated to run for president of the United States.

The arguments about whether the Iowa caucuses are well enough attended or demographically representative enough to rate the daunting influence they have on the Democratic and Republican nominating process are long-running. But whatever your view of these first-in-the-nation contests, some props have to be given to the candidates for braving the chilling early Iowa winter and bollixing up their family holidays and talking themselves to laryngitis make their cases for themselves. And even more power to the residents of Iowa who, whether they like it or not, have been bombarded by political messages over every conceivable medium of communications and for weeks have hardly been able to go to the convenience store without tripping over a presidential candidate.

Unlike primaries, in which voters' commitment can be limited to the seconds-long action of marking a ballot, the highly participatory nature of attending a caucus makes turnout and outcomes all the more unpredictable. Sure, there have been an steady stream of polls from several organizations, often with varying results. Some surveys conducted in the caucus campaign's last days showed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama gaining some distance on the presumed national Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and 2004 party vice presidential nominee John Edwards, while others suggest a too-close-to-call contest. On the Republican side, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, boosted by his surge among fellow religious conservatives, is either poised to score a big upset -- or is in a tight battle with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the wealthy and well-funded GOP front-runner in Iowa for most of the caucus campaign.

So .... a few final presumptions in the minutes before the opinions that count --- those of Iowa caucus goers -- are stated.

On the Democratic side, any image that Clinton nomination was inevitable have proven illusory. The New York senator has political assets galore and may still win the nomination, but she will have to fight for it. Obama's charisma and theme of political change -- along with his extraordinary success in competing with Clinton for the Democratic fundraising lead -- has made him a formidable challenger. And Edwards, who showed strong personal appeal on the campaign trail when he bid for the 2004 Democratic nomination, has built a solid following behind his populist message of fighting poverty and entrenched corporate special interests -- though the Iowa vote will suggest whether this following is big enough. Among the other candidates, only the caucus vote itself will show whether any have been persuasive enough to break into first tier status.

On the Republican side, the caucuses have mainly served to prove that several candidates have serious assets that could deliver the nomination to any one of them, but also have flaws that could undermine their efforts. A Mitt Romney win would confirm the clout of his business-oriented image and strong campaign organization, but would not guarantee that he will be able to stave off the apparent surge by Arizona Sen. John McCain in Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire (where McCain upset George W. Bush at the start of the 2000 nominating campaign). A Huckabee win in Iowa would show he does have considerable strength among conservative voters, but would not necessarily produce a big "bounce" for him in New Hampshire, which has a smaller percentage of religious conservatives than does Iowa. McCain, as he did in 2000, has gambled on playing down Iowa, where his image as a Republican 'maverick" doesn't play well among the hardcore GOP activists who participate in the caucuses. And former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is gambling even bigger, hoping he can weather expected defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire by focusing on the huge batch of primaries later in January and on Feb. 5.

That's all just our best guess, though. Go on, Iowans, tell us what you think. We've been waiting so long....

OK, if you're heading out to caucus in Iowa, you shouldn't need to be told this but... bundle up!

Iowa's caucus-ians have avoided the worst of winter's offerings... no precip across the state tonight... but a stiff breeze has kicked in. While the old school tactic of courting voters with drams of whiskey is definitely NOT on the caucus menu, an offer of free-flowing hot beverages might be a vote-getter tonight.

The most recent temp readings on the Weather Channel Web site show that it's 31 with a wind chill of 18 in Sioux City, 29 with a wind chill of 17 in Des Moines, and 23 with a wind chill of (brrr!) 9 in Davenport.

Hey, we're just looking out for your well-being here. And if you need some cold comfort, the current temp in Manchester, New Hampshire -- the next stop on America's presidential campaign-a-thon -- is 8 with a wind chill of 4 below zero.

Hello, Iowans!

Have any interesting stories to share about tonight's caucuses or the VERY long campaign that preceded them (and don't mind if we publish a selected few of them)? Have some serious thoughts about the Iowa caucus process and its role as the first-in-the-nation presidential voting event? Please send them to politicscomments@cq.com.

The folks who decided the Iowa caucuses should be held on Jan. 3 had to know they were pushing their luck with the weather. But if the weather forecast for Thursday night holds up, they can thank their lucky stars.

Not that it's going to be tropical or anything. It's Iowa, and it's January. But the current forecast for the capital city of Des Moines for Thursday night (according to the Weather Channel Web site) is clear with a low of 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pretty chilly, yeah, but no ice or snow. And if you're daunted by cold temperatures, why are you in Iowa in the winter?

And, to further underscore their good fortune, the voter turnout people dodged an iceball by one day. The expected low for tonight (Wednesday) is 5 degrees. Now THAT might actually keep people home by the fire...

The Thursday night forecast is almost identical in Davenport, located in eastern Iowa, and Sioux City in the west.