New Hampshire results : surprising or not?

The picture comes from www.npr.org.

John McCain's victory in the New Hamphire primary was predicted by the polls and might give momentum to his bid for the presidency. It's another blow to Mitt Romney who comes in second again although he had campaigned hard in the State. Mitt Romney, however, did win the Wyoming caucus on the 5th of January : so far he has two silver medals and a gold, as he likes to put it (remember he organized the Olympic Games of Salt Lake City). His campaign has yet to win a major primary but, as long as he remains a strong second, he may become a reasonable choice in a race with no clear front-runner. Let's see what happens in Nevada and South Carolina : will the evangelical voters back Huckabee again? How will Giuliani's antiterrorist message go down? Will the moderate, straight-talking McCain attract as many fiscal conservatives as he did in N.H.?

The last polls had been predicting another win for Barack Obama and yet he trails Hillary Clinton by three percentage points. Why? The most obvious reason is that the Clintons have always been strong among N.H. Democrats. In 1992, Bill Clinton's results in Iowa had been very poor but he came in second in N.H. and interpreted this as a victory, calling himself the "comeback kid" and went on to win the primaries and the election. He and his wife thus have a particular standing in N.H.
Hillary Clinton campaigned hard in N.H., spending a lot of money and time there and that's probably another reason for her victory. There are very few African-American voters in N.H.
The day before the primary, when asked how she coped with the campaign, Hillary Clinton broke up a bit and showed a lot of emotion, will this have influenced the voters, especially the women who supported her massively in N.H. after letting her down in Iowa? Here's this video that has been watched over and over again on youtube and elsewhere. Was this unusual show of emotion prepared or really spontaneous?
Clinton's victory launches her campaign back into the fight which seems as open as ever...
We really have to watch South Carolina, a State in which Clinton, Obama and Edwards all have claims to. Edwards was born there, Clinton has always been popular with African-American Democrats( Bill Clinton was sometimes called "the first Black President") and Obama might be able to attract this constituency now that he has emerged as a very electable candidate.
Watch and see....

A couple links to interesting articles & videos.

A New York Times' video on the unpredictability of the primary race.

To see the full results and the break-down between the candidates, click here.

The commentary by The Economist is quite insightful.