Graphic: how New Hampshire was won and lost

Was it the fears that Hillary Clinton raised about Barack Obama, or her welling tears that saved her in New Hampshire? The answer yesterday appeared to be more subtle: a woman often seen as regal and distant in Iowa became more real this week.

Her victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary stunned not only the pollsters and pundits, unanimous in predicting another comfortable win for Mr Obama, but even Mrs Clinton’s own aides.

In the small hours yesterday – before a breakfast of humble pie – conventional wisdom was being hastily rewritten with those tears in a Portsmouth coffee shop featuring prominently in the revised analysis.

A similar explanation was offered by Mr Obama’s camp, where an adviser said it must have been her “choking up” on Monday that persuaded sympathetic women to switch support at the last moment. “There is no other reason we can see,” he said.

Exit polls suggested she beat Mr Obama among women by a wide margin, with many apparently making up their minds after pictures of her emotional moment had filled their TV screens.

But a note of scepticism was introduced by Mrs Clinton herself. Although she said the tears might have made a difference among older women voters, the former First Lady preferred to mark Saturday’s TV debate as the turning point.

“I felt, really, for a long time that I was kind of running against myself,” she said. “That ended on Saturday night.” The debate saw her being both tough and tender, tackling her opponents head on while also deftly dealing with a question about her likeability by joking that her feelings had been hurt. Mr Obama’s response, by comparison, appeared ungracious, saying she was “likeable enough”.

At subsequent campaign events, Mrs Clinton went out of her way to engage at a personal level with voters. Whereas in Iowa she had stopped taking questions, in New Hampshire she would stay for hours answering each and every concern, often talking with a previously unseen passion about her vision for America.

At her victory rally on Tuesday night, Mrs Clinton said that she had listened to New Hampshire voters and, in doing so, “I found my own voice”.

When TV networks flashed up projections showing she was the winner, there were wild scenes of celebrations among her supporters. Aides high-fived each other; people hugged, some were crying, but most were roaring and laughing at the sheer, astonishing nature of her comeback.

Mrs Clinton was beaming, and said “thank you” about 40 times before the noise subsided. She was surrounded by young people. Unlike in Iowa, her husband stood to the side: the message for the cameras was that Mr Obama does not have a lock on the youth vote.

Her speech also showed she had recalibrated her message to incorporate some of Mr Obama’s language of hope and his “movement” for change. “This campaign will transform America,” she promised.

Terry McAuliffe, her campaign chairman, declared: “People saw the real Hillary Clinton.”

And with Mr Clinton leading the charge for greater scrutiny of her rival’s record, her aides believe that Mr Obama’s “free ride” with an awe-struck media is coming to an end.

But neither camp expected Tuesday night’s result. Her aides had been wearily preparing to spin that a narrow defeat was a good result, a reprise of the line used by Bill Clinton when he finished second in the same primary 16 years ago.

The “Comeback Kid” of 1992 went on to win the White House and his wife hopes to follow him, having recast her campaign strategy in New Hampshire. In the weeks ahead, she plans to combine a more combative approach to Mr Obama with a personal – even feminine – touch.

Mr Obama will, of course, live to fight another day. He lost by a narrow margin – 2 per cent – in a state which until recently had shown a consistent polling for Mrs Clinton. But he may also regret having perhaps fallen victim to his own postIowa hyperbole. At least some of those who attended his packed rallies in the past week said they were there to observe the phenomenon rather than offer their support.

And it was noticeable that as Mrs Clinton lowered the drawbridge to voters, his walls were going up. At many rallies in recent days he adopted a cautious approach by not taking questions from voters and preferring, instead, to take flight on the wings of his rhetoric.

In a TV interview yesterday, Mr Obama suggested his New Hampshire defeat may help his campaign because in recent days he had felt in danger of being “anointed”. His own capacity to emote should never be underestimated. In a footnote to the Coffee Shop Moment, Marianne Pernold Young, the woman whose personal question caused Mrs Clinton to cry, came forward yesterday to say that she had voted for Mr Obama. Why? Because he had reduced her to tears at one of his rallies, she said.

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