A night of shocks: how it unfolded

The voters of New Hampshire delivered one of the biggest upsets in modern political history on Tuesday, giving Hillary Clinton a come-from-behind victory that seemed completely elusive as the day began.

No-one, in truth, fully understands yet what happened here tonight. You could not find a single person today before about 5pm who thought the result would be anything like this (and I include in that members of the Clinton campaign who were nervously telling journalists their best possible result here would be a narrow defeat).

So instant explanations as to what happened are as silly as the proclamations five days ago that the Democratic contest was over. The instant popular theory is that it was Mrs Clinton’s little tearful moment on the trail on Monday. Who knows? Perhaps it helped, perhaps not.

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BACKGROUND

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The only thing we can say with real confidence is that we should have remembered the way New Hampshire has voted so often in the past.

The voters here seem to take particular care to reject the assumptions of the pundits, and the verdicts of the voters in Iowa. In 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 2000, New Hampshire voters – sometimes Democrats, sometimes Republicans – flipped their primary race on its head by choosing the candidate rejected in Iowa.

It seems (let me say with due humility given the recent analytical record) that there is something to the argument that today they may have just been saying, as they appear to have done in the past: "Slow down. This is a long campaign. We don't want to anoint anyone the next president this early, least of all someone the American people know next to nothing about.”

The mechanics of Mrs Clinton’s victory were clear, at least if the exit poll can be believed. Unlike Iowa, where women voters actually marginally preferred Barack Obama, she turned women out in large numbers and they chose her 47-34 per cent over her opponent. She also did very well – as she did in Iowa – with working-class, lower-income and older voters. Mr Obama did not turn out quite as many new voters as he did in Iowa, where they were key to his victory.

So, despite the shock, the contours of this race ought to be clear. Mr Obama has demonstrated that he can reach across party lines to independents and even Republicans. If Mrs Clinton can counter that in the big primary states with a massive turnout of more traditional Democratic voters she will presumably prevail.

On the Republican side, the shock was rather smaller in New Hampshire. John McCain won, as the final polls indicated he would. Like the winner of an elimination contest he now lives to fight several more days, beginning with Michigan next week and then South Carolina on January 29, where he looks likely to be in a tough two-way fight with the Iowa winner, Mike Huckabee.

For Mitt Romney, the only one of the main candidates in either party to have lost both of the first two contests, the situation looks desperate. He must win Michigan next week to revive his flagging chances and then hope to get something of a showing in South Carolina to keep him alive for Florida on January 29 before Tsunami Tuesday on February 5. Rudy Giuliani, who got single digits in New Hampshire and Iowa, might also still live to fight on in Florida, the vessel of almost all his remaining hopes.

Back to the Democrats. The obvious question when everybody has scraped the egg off their faces today is whether this restores Mrs Clinton's inevitable status. Expect to hear lots of firm assertions that she is firmly back on track for the nomination. What we can say after the shock of New Hampshire, with real and abiding confidence is: Who on earth knows?

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