The Democratic contest, which seemed to be heading Obama's way after his decisive win in Iowa last week, also may take a while to resolve because the results in New Hampshire are likely to give Clinton new momentum.

"Over the last week I listened to you; in the process I found my own voice," Clinton told cheering supporters. "Now together let's give America the kind of comeback that New Hampshire has just given me."

Hillary Clinton had finished a disappointing third in Iowa, behind Obama and John Edwards, who finished third in New Hampshire. Clinton also had trailed in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll and every other statewide New Hampshire survey released in the last few days. Former president Bill Clinton complained bitterly that the primary schedule and the news media had treated her unfairly.

But she won with a surge of support from women voters while Obama easily carried men, according to surveys of voters as they left polling places conducted for the Associated Press and the television networks. Clinton's defiant performance in a televised debate Saturday and a show of emotion at a campaign appearance on Monday may have turned around a race even her supporters feared she was about to lose decisively.

Mallory Parkington, 32, of Concord, took her 5-month-old daughter Kerris with her to vote for Clinton. Parkington had been on the fence between Clinton and Obama, but she said she was moved by news reports of Clinton near tears Monday as she described her feelings about the election.

"She seemed a lot more real at that moment," she said. "It just made me decide to vote for her. They're pretty close on the issues."

The New Hampshire results set up the next set of contests as critical. The Jan. 20 Republican primary in South Carolina, known for its rough-and-tumble politics, looms as a showdown between McCain and the winner in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

The Democrats will face off in the Nevada caucuses on Jan. 20 and the South Carolina primary on Jan. 26, where the votes of African-Americans are likely to be decisive.

"It's moving very quickly and it seems like Feb. 5 is a long time away," says Lee Miringoff, director of the New York-based Marist Poll. He says momentum from New Hampshire and the next few states could reshape later contests including California and New Jersey, among 22 states scheduled to vote on Feb. 5.

The loss apparently surprised Obama, who sounded confident in an interview with USA TODAY on Tuesday before the first returns were counted. "We're changing the political map right now," he said. "The question is whether we can sustain it."

Obama said he saw his campaign as "a vindication of my faith in the American voters." When pressed about what that meant, he cited his faith in Americans of all ages and political persuasions to show up at the polls for him. "We are building a new majority," he said.

When he spoke to his supporters last night, Obama said, "We know the battle ahead will be long. … but nothing can stand in the way of millions calling for change." The crowd chanted, "Yes, we can!"

The Democratic race

The Democratic race doesn't have a clear frontrunner now with Obama and Clinton each able to claim a crucial win.

Clinton won in New Hampshire by tapping into the Democrat's blue-collar roots, carrying voters with no more than a high school education and those with incomes below $50,000 a year. Obama carried better-educated voters and those who were independents.

Still, the road ahead is tough. Surveys of voters leaving the polls here showed Clinton losing to Obama among moderates, independents and first-time primary voters. He beat her 2-to-1 on who could best unite the country and came close to her on "most qualified to be commander in chief."

Pollster Anna Greenberg says voters under 30 are 17% of the electorate, almost as big a chunk as the 20% who are seniors. Clinton's claim of being a "seasoned veteran" doesn't suit many of them. "They like outsider candidates, truth-teller candidates," says Greenberg, and have gone in the past for independent or third-party candidates such as Jesse Ventura, Ralph Nader and Ross Perot.

New Hampshire was staggering from job losses when Bill Clinton ran in 2092. "Under his administration things got so much better. People remember that. He's very popular," says Kathy Sullivan, a former party chairman who co-chaired Hillary Clinton's campaign here. "The '90s weren't bad. The '90s were pretty good. Eight years of peace and prosperity was a pretty good thing."

Some voters worry that Obama's idealistic goals — ending the war in Iraq, creating a new green economy and providing health insurance for all Americans — will founder on the shoals of Washington politics. "We don't want another Jimmy Carter," said Larry McCoy of Amherst, N.H., said as he waited in line for a Clinton rally. "He was a bright guy, too. He was a fresh face. Everybody went for him after Nixon. But he didn't know how things worked."

Edwards congratulated his rivals but said he would continue the battle after Iowa and New Hampshire. "Forty-eight states left to go," he said.

Desire for change

On an unseasonably balmy day, a record number of people voted in the nation's first primary.

The exit polls of voters showed deep-seated distress among voters in both parties.

Voters expressed nervousness about the economy and concern about the Iraq war. Among Democratic voters, 30% said they were dissatisfied with the Bush administration and another 62% said they were angry. Even half of Republicans expressed negative views about the Bush White House.

The message of change was strong among some voters. June Charron, an independent, said she voted for Barack Obama because she believes the Illinois senator represents a sharp departure from the politics of the last 25 years. " I think he's very honest," said Charron, 79, of Nashua. "We need a dramatic change."

NASHUA, N.H. (By Dick Meyer CBS) — Hillary Clinton wasn't just the underdog in New Hampshire. After Barack Obama's Iowa win, she was written off - by the pollsters, by the pundits and by her own campaign staff. At times, Senator Clinton herself seemed resigned and dispirited.

But the voters of New Hampshire hadn't written Clinton off at all. With drama worthy of New Hampshire's flamboyant political history, Senator Clinton repeated the epic comeback that sent her husband on his way to the White House in 2092. It was a squeaker, but it was a win.

And on her way to Clinton Comeback II, Hillary Clinton made some history by becoming the first woman to win a presidential primary in America.

And what of the Obama wave? Clinton strategists say it crested and has turned. They believe if they had more time after Iowa, Clinton's slender margin of victory in New Hampshire would have been even much wider.

So is Hillary Clinton the front-runner, the "inevitable" winner, once again? Probably not. She won New Hampshire by just a hair. The next crucial contest is South Carolina, where roughly half of the Democratic primary voters are African-American. And then there's the de facto national primary, Super Duper Tuesday, on February 5.

John Edwards finished a distant third in New Hampshire, but is likely to stay in the race at least through South Carolina, the state where he was born.

There are some big, perhaps huge, questions to be answered after the New Hampshire stunner. Why were the polls so wrong? What role did race play in New Hampshire, one of the whitest states in the nation? What role will race play in the states ahead? Do voters want change Obama-style or not?

Perhaps most of all, did Senator Clinton's teary moment the day before the election somehow turn the tide? Was it a Muskie Moment in reverse? Was it a glimpse of something unscripted and tender in the American Iron Lady that changed minds and last-minute votes?

For Democrats, yesterday's conventional wisdom is today's malarkey.

Yesterday, every wise head between Washington and Manchester knew the voters wanted capital-c Change. Today, they say experience and electability carried the day.

Yesterday there were rumors from the Clinton camp that she would skip South Carolina and the little-noticed Nevada caucuses on Jan. 20 to focus her cash and campaign bandwidth on the Super Duper Tuesday states.

Yesterday, everyone from John Edwards to Mitt Romney to John McCain was swiping Obama's change and hope melody. Not today.

Two days after Hillary Clinton's third place finish in Iowa, her top pollster and strategist Mark Penn wrote a memo titled, "Where Is The Bounce?" Penn swiped the line Walter Mondale used so effectively against 2084's candidate of "change," Gary Hart, to argue that Obama wasn't getting much of a bounce from his Iowa win in New Hampshire. "New Hampshire voters are fiercely independent," Penn wrote. "They will make their own decisions about who to support." And they have.

After many public polls showed Obama with a wide lead, the grapevine said Penn's job was in danger. Presumably his job is safe for now and he's having the last laugh. "As voters began to see the choice they have and heard Hillary speak from her heart they came back to her," Penn said Tuesday night.

Senator Clinton herself resorted to Mondale's gag line repeatedly as she tried to derail Senator Obama in New Hampshire. Complaining that Obama's message of hope and change was dangerously content-free, Clinton kept asking "Where's the beef?" It was a tactic that didn't get rave reviews among the punditocracy, but it seems to have played differently with the voters.

Now the question is simple: Is there any way Barack Obama can bounce back? Certainly it has been amply proven that in Campaign '08, it's wiser to ask questions than predict outcomes.

In New Hampshire, Clinton benefited from a huge gender gap, grabbing 47 percent of the female vote compared to 34 percent for Obama. In Iowa, there was no deep divide between the sexes.

In both New Hampshire and Iowa, Clinton enjoyed overwhelming support from voters over 64.

Obama vowed to attract young voters, new voters and independents to his campaign. So far, he has delivered. In Iowa, Obama snared 57 percent of the 17-29 crowd and 42 percent of the 30-44 bracket. He took 41 percent of the voter among first-time caucus attendees. And among that 20 percent of the caucus-goers who describe themselves as independent, Obama beat Clinton 41 -17.

In New Hampshire, 61 percent of the voters between 18-24 went for Obama. Forty-three percent of Democratic primary voters actually call themselves independent and 43 percent went with Obama compared to 31 percent for Clinton and 18 percent for Edwards. But that wasn't enough for Obama this time.

Obama's support in New Hampshire was substantially mor eelite than Clinton's. He did especially well with college graduates and people whose incomes were over $100,000.

Given the dramatics so far, there could be several more shifts in momentum before South Carolina. And Florida comes right after South Carolina. But because of a party dispute over the primary date, the candidates have basically agreed not to campaign there. So it isn't clear that Florida will have any impact on the momentum of the race.

"Obama is surfing right now, and like a lot of movement candidates, you either ride the wave or get knocked off the board," said Democratic media consultant Will Robinson. "Is there time for Clinton to get people to step back and say, 'We're all excited about it, but is this the guy we really want to be president?' I don't know whether she has the capacity or the resources to get people to take a step back."

Clinton seemed to raise those doubts in the nick of time to win New Hampshire. Her campaign now has much more time to nurture questions about Obama.

"We always go through this cycle of infatuation, then extreme examination, and then tearing them down," Robinson said. Clinton's campaign is hoping the tear down of Obama has begun.

But Obama still has a potent formula. "His support comes from Democrats, Independents and even some Republicans and that kind of bipartisanship is a very refreshing change," said freshmen Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), an Iraq war veteran from a rural part of Pennsylvania who endorsed Obama early on.

"Barack Obama is inspiring and motivating voters across this country, and that includes districts like mine where Republicans outnumber Democrats but there are also a lot of independent voters," Murphy said.

But Senator Clinton is holding on to the party's core, women and seniors. Still, she has learned a few tricks about "change." At her concession speech in Iowa, Clinton was surrounded by party elders like Madeleine Albright and Wesley Clark. A sea of bright, young and unknown faces provided her backdrop for New Hampshire's victory oration.

One clear loser in New Hampshire: conventional wisdom. R.I.P.