What Does It All Mean?

The polls in New Hampshire have been closed for nearly an hour and a half. Returns are incomplete, but enough votes have been counted for John McCain to declare victory on the Republican side.

And, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton's political obituary may have been premature. When all the votes are counted, she may yet finish second, but right now, she has the lead with 40%. Barack Obama is second with 36%. John Edwards is a distant third with 17%.

What does it mean? Well, I think it shows that each state's electorate is different, and different candidates will be favored in different states.

For example, Mike Huckabee did well in Iowa, where there are a lot of evangelical Christian voters, and he didn't do so well in New Hampshire, where that group isn't as influential.

Next week brings the Michigan primary, which will have a lot of independents. And they can vote in whichever party's primary they choose. Mitt Romney's father was governor of Michigan, and that may help him there. But independent voters may tend to vote for McCain.

The week after that is the South Carolina primary, which has a high number of evangelical Christian voters, and Huckabee may be favored there.

On the Democratic side, the rush to proclaim Obama the agent of change may not have been justified. And the Clinton campaign may not be quite ready for an overhaul.

But John Edwards' campaign is in trouble. It lacks the funding that Obama and Clinton have, and it lacks a victory. And polls of upcoming states suggest the prospects are dim at best.

They'll be counting the votes for awhile yet. What we can conclude at this early hour is that McCain is still in the Republican race, but Romney's prospects appear to be cloudy. Huckabee hasn't been hurt by his anticipated poor showing in New Hampshire.

For the Democrats, Obama hasn't yet established himself as an irresistible force, any more than Hillary has established herself as the "inevitable" nominee. But the Democratic race is rapidly becoming an Obama vs. Clinton affair.