Hillary Clinton, John McCain Win New Hampshire Primaries

With 37% of the Republican Primary Vote, John McCain won the state of New Hampshire. That victory came narrowly though, beating Presidential hopeful by only 5-percentage-points.

Hillary Clinton's victory was even closer. After a close race, the Associated Press finally called it after more than 2 hours after the polls closed. Clinton captured 39% of the NH vote and only beat runner-up Barack Obama by 2%.

Just last summer, Hillary Clinton was considered the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination for the Presidential Election this Fall. And just last Summer, John McCain, a man who was the most identifiable Republican candidate in early 2007, was considered nothing more than an afterthought as poll after poll saw frontrunners distancing themselves from the Presidential hopeful.

Clinton's dominating lead in the polls from this summer kept disintegrating as early as the November, and in last week's Iowa Caucus, her lead was no more as Barack Obama won the Democratic vote in that state.

John McCain was already so far out of the Iowa Caucus race that he just gave up and didn't even campaign in Iowa down the stretch. He quickly moved on to New Hampshire for greener pastures, in hopes of recapturing some to the magic he experienced in that state 8 years ago when he ran against current President, George W. Bush.

So immediately after the Iowa Caucus, you had two highly popular and extremely recognizable Presidential candidates in opposing parties already seeing their hopes of winning their party's nomination slipping away.

But on January 8, 2008, the momentum found both of them again.

John McCain winning New Hampshire was great comeback for him. After bowing out of Iowa, McCain immediately began campaigning in NH, delivering his message and promoting himself as the "term of the year", an agent of change. McCain won by beating Romney in all of the age groups under the age of 65.*