While Barack Obama is riding another wave of adulation 66 miles away in Nashua, volunteers trudge up snowy hills in a picturesque village, gently cajoling voters to join him in “turning the page” of history.

They, just as much as the excited crowds who come in their thousands to greet the Democratic presidential candidate, are part of what he calls a “movement” — the march of which threatens to sweep aside Hillary Clinton’s still formidable election machine in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

Stephanie Cabot, 44, had not engaged in political activity since she was at high school but has forgone a day’s skiing with her family because she feels a “responsibility to make an effort”. Standing next to her car — painted with flowers “to distinguish it from the other Subarus” at her children’s school — she peers over maps identifying Walpole neighbours who have not yet made up their minds.

Her friend, Bill Haney, a film-maker and former national Democratic Party official, is buying socks for his slush-sodden feet but lingers in the shop to evangelise for Mr Obama. He has just driven two hours from Boston to help out and says it was only recently that he became a convert.

A race like a crackpot Dynasty

The contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton matches any fiction

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“Obama affirms the best part of America, to America,” he explains. “While the Republicans have tried to use class and race to drive us apart, he plays to the yearning in all of us to heal those divisions — to make the dream come true.”

In Iowa last week, thousands of idealistic, often youthful and overwhelmingly white supporters flooded the caucuses to vote for the man that they hope will be America’s first black President. And in New Hampshire — which, ethnically, is also vanilla-white — it is hard to escape the sense that a similar storm is brewing.

In Nashua on Saturday, 3,000 people crammed into a school gymnasium to hear him tell the “movement” that “this is not about me — this is about you”. His speech reflected a new air of confidence as he heralded support among independents and even Republicans in Iowa as evidence of a “new working majority” which, in an implicit critique of Bill Clinton’s White House years, might finally turn promises into action.

His pitch, aimed at the large portion of independent voters in the Granite state, ended with him saying: “New Hampshire, it is your turn to change America.”

Mrs Clinton, speaking at about the same time to a crowd of fewer than 1,000 in Concord, could be forgiven for feeling bewildered at suddenly finding herself reduced to the status of a 20th-century relic. But this is a clean-break election in which neither the President nor Vice-President is standing — and the former First Lady appears as an establishment candidate to many voters.

At a televised debate on Saturday, she said that Mr Obama was “raising false hopes” and represented little more than pretty words.

Andy Brown has come from Mrs Clinton’s own senatorial state of New York to work for Mr Obama in Walpole. “We’re in the middle of something special here — and it’s growing,” he says. At his artist’s studio, Bruce Blanchette, 65, is keen to point out this is not merely a youth movement. “This guy Barack, he inspires me like JFK did — a long time ago.”

Many of Mr Obama’s campaign offices across the country are adorned with home-made art about personal empowerment or proclaiming to visitors that they are stepping through the door of history.

His own speeches, sometimes diffident last year, have increasingly featured high flights of rhetoric, comparing supporters to the “rag-tag army” who took on the might of the British Empire, fought slavery in the Civil War or marched for justice alongside Martin Luther King.

“This is our moment,” he says. The eyes of people listening to him gleam with a sense of wonderment, even awe. Mrs Clinton’s events, by contrast, appear to provide more an intellectual than emotional connection, with supporters coolly nodding their heads in agreement.

But the enthusiasm of Mr Obama’s activists can cut both ways. At the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual dinner on Friday night, some of them booed Mrs Clinton and chanted his name when she was speaking before rushing to the stage like pop fans when he appeared.

Mary Louise Hancock, the 87-year-old grand old lady of the state’s Democratic machine, tut-tutted. She “resented” that independent voters were poised to exert such influence on Tuesday, turning the primary into a “personal-liking affair” dominated by “students and the trendies”.

Canvassing around Walpole, Ms Cabot and Mr Haney are extremely careful to avoid making criticism of Mrs Clinton, not least because Mr Obama has issued strict instructions that campaign workers must seek to broaden, rather than narrow, his appeal. One encounter at the home of a retired postmistress takes fully 45 minutes and included the baking of a plate of cookies. They think they won her around.

Yet some of the undecided voters they encounter demonstrate the individualistic and independent streak by which New Hampshire voters, who take their early role in picking presidential candidates extremely seriously, are known. Daniel Shwank, a retired dentist, tells the Obama team his vote is a closely guarded secret, but admits, with a twinkle, “I’m more excited by this election.”

Larry Siebrands, the pastor at the local church, has a Clinton poster in his window. But it belongs to his wife and he is weighing carefully whether to back Mr Obama. “I’m reading his book. It’s between him and Bill Richardson. I will make up my mind when I walk to vote.”

At a rally in a Manchester theatre yesterday morning, there was the usual frenzy around Mr Obama’s appearance. “He’s amazing,” said Melissa Schoeplein. But she, like many others yesterday, was from outside New Hampshire. Benjamin Schak, 26, had driven through the night from Connecticut to catch a glimpse of the man.

And it may still be significant that at least some of New Hampshire voters present appeared to be there for the hype, not the hope. Peter Wallner, 61, said he preferred John Edwards on policy but wanted to see if Mr Obama really was the “new JFK”.

Kate Ramsay, 19, was also backing Mr Edwards, while her cousin, Moira, has already voted by post for Mrs Clinton.

Did she have any buyer’s remorse? “No, I just want to see the Obama phenomenon thing.”

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