Okay, it's starting. After a bunch of debate in the Hillary camp over how directly to draw "contrasts" with Obama, the Hillary campaign has sent out a new mailer in New Hampshire attacking Obama directly on abortion.

Click on the images below to enlarge:

The Obama campaign has sent us a response to debunk the mailer's charges: Two links. This one, and this one.

A second poll from New Hampshire, conducted by Research 2000, shows no real post-Iowa bounce for Barack Obama — he and Hillary Clinton are tied. Meanwhile, John McCain has doubled his support since three weeks ago, to lead Mitt Romney.

Here are the numbers, as compared to their last poll released about three weeks ago:

Democrats:
Obama 34% (+2)
Clinton 33% (+2)
Edwards 23% (+5)

Republicans:
McCain 35% (+18)
Romney 29% (-2)
Huckabee 13% (+4)
Giuliani 8% (-7)
Paul 7% (+4)

John McCain now has the lead in New Hampshire, according to the new CNN poll, which was conducted by the University of New Hampshire after the Iowa caucuses.

Here are the numbers, compared to their last poll released only three days ago:

McCain 33% (+4)
Romney 27% (-2)
Giuliani 14% (+2)
Huckabee 11% (+1)
Paul 9% (+2)

The new CNN poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire after the Iowa caucuses, gives the smallest movement for Barack Obama out of any post-Iowa poll so far — it has him tied with Hillary Clinton, with no statistically significant changes at all.

Here are the numbers, compared to their last poll released only three days ago:

Obama 33% (+3)
Clinton 33% (-1)
Edwards 20% (+3)

Mitt Romney has a new ad up in New Hampshire, promoting himself as the champion of conservative values and of America as the world's superpower. It uses old footage of his speech at CPAC about a year ago:

Another new ad from Barack Obama shows a feel-good face to New Hampshire — it features footage from his Iowa victory speech, and touts the endorsements of multiple NH newspapers who praised him as an independent, common-sense leader:

Mitt Romney now has a victory under his belt after his previous loss in Iowa, winning today's Wyoming Republican caucus. With 12 delegates up for grabs, Romney has won 7, Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter took 1 each, and the rest are still undecided.

The Wyoming GOP chose to hold their caucuses ahead of New Hampshire, potentially endangering the integrity of the primary calendar by stepping on NH's turf. However, the caucus itself did not attract huge headlines, and only Romney, Thompson, Hunter and Ron Paul even campaigned there — Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani never even showed up.

It remains to be seen whether Romney's big win in the land of Cheney will be noticed and help him get momentum with GOP voters, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

The new American Research Group poll in New Hampshire, conducted entirely after the Iowa Caucus, shows John McCain with a big lead over Mitt Romney. Here are the numbers, compared to ARG's final pre-Iowa poll:

McCain 39% (+4)
Romney 25% (+0)
Huckabee 14% (+2)
Giuliani 7% (-1)
Paul 6% (-3)

These numbers are quite different from the Rasmussen poll, which shows a closer race between McCain and Romney, with Paul in third place. New Hampshire polls are ARG's stock-in-trade, but we'll find out in just a few days who's right.

The new American Research Group poll gives Barack Obama a 12-point lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Here are the numbers, compared to their last pre-Iowa tracking poll:

Obama 38% (+7)
Clinton 26% (-9)
Edwards 20% (+5)

Like today's Rasmussen poll, which shows similar numbers, this poll was conducted entirely after the Iowa Caucus results were known. The margin of error is ±4%, giving Obama a lead outside the margin.

Barack Obama has this positive ad up in New Hampshire, reminding voters that he opposed the Iraq War five years ago, and promoting him as the best candidate to unite a divided country and get things done:

(Via Ben Smith)

The latest tracking poll from Suffolk University shows that Hillary Clinton's lead over Barack Obama has nearly been cut in half. This is a three-day tracking poll, incorporating one day of post-Iowa sampling and two days of pre-Iowa samples. Here are today's numbers, as compared to yesterday's:

Clinton 36% (-1)
Obama 29% (+4)
Edwards 13% (-2)

Here's some perspective: Suffolk's tracking poll has been something of an outlier all this cycle, giving Hillary a bigger edge than other pollsters. Their tracking poll yesterday, conducted entirely before Iowa, gave her a 37%-25% lead over Obama. So if only one day of post-Iowa sampling cuts her lead from 12 points down to 7, then that one day must have been really good for Obama.

Barack Obama has taken a huge lead in the first pure post-Iowa poll of New Hampshire. Rasmussen gives Obama 37%, Hillary Clinton 27%, John Edwards 19%, and Bill Richardson 8%. Rasmussen's last poll from two weeks ago had Clinton at 31%, Obama 28%, Edwards 18%, and Richardson 6%.

The poll was conducted on Friday, a one-day poll with the margin of error at ±4.5% — meaning that Obama's ten-point lead is just outside the margin. Also, Obama leads Hillary by 5 points among core Democrats, and by 16 points among independents. Indies are expected to make up 40% of the Dem primary electorate, according to the survey.

On the Republican side: John McCain 31%, Mitt Romney 26%, Ron Paul 14%, Mike Huckabee 11%, Rudy Giuliani 8%, and Fred Thompson 5%. Two weeks ago it was Romney 31%, McCain 27%, Giuliani 13%, Huckabee 11%, Paul 7%, and Thompson 5%.

The New Hampshire Republican Party has pulled out as a co-sponsor of tomorrow night's Fox News debate, due to the controversies surrounding the exclusion of Ron Paul. Fox News is barring Paul from the debate, with many people believing it is because of his opposition to the Iraq War.

Bear in mind that Fox News is excluding Paul from the debate, despite the absence of any objective criteria that would shut out Paul and still include some of the other people they're inviting. For example, Paul got 10% of the vote in Iowa, while invited candidate Rudy Giuliani took only 4% and is at about the same place as Paul in New Hampshire polls.

The Hillary campaign, which has promised a sharpening of "contrast" between her and Obama in the days ahead, appears to have concluded that they won't be running any ads against Obama in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday:

Clinton advisers said Friday that they would not mount a negative advertising campaign against Mr. Obama in New Hampshire, saying the primary was too soon for such an onslaught to have any effect.

Relatedly, Mark Halperin quotes a source telling him that a new Hillary spot has been delivered to New Hampshire stations that may or may not have aired yet. Halperin describes the spot as a "postitive ad with subtle contrast on experience."

I can confirm that this is correct. I spoke to an official at WMUR yesterday, and he told me that they did indeed have a Hillary spot in the can set to run. He told me that the spot wasn't a negative one, adding that the gist of it was that Hillary is "the only candidate set to lead on day one." It's unclear whether it has run -- or whether it will.

The first post-Iowa tracking poll for New Hampshire is out from Zogby, incorporating one day's worth of data after Iowa along with two days of pre-Iowa numbers, and it shows diminishing leads for both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Here it is, as compared to yesterday's tracking poll:

Democrats:
Clinton 32% (+0)
Obama 28% (+2)
Edwards 20% (+0)
Richardson 7% (+0)

Republicans:
McCain 32% (-2)
Romney 30% (+0)
Huckabee 12% (+2)
Giuliani 9% (+0)
Paul 7% (+0)

"Overall the numbers have not moved that much but there was the beginning of a post-Iowa bounce for Obama and Huckabee," John Zogby told Reuters. "We will see more tomorrow but I think we will clearly see them make gains."

Fred Thompson has performed dismally in New Hampshire polls, and he clearly knows it — he says he's skipping the state. Thompson admitted today on MSNBC: "We're not competitive in New Hampshire. And we won’t be campaigning there other than to go in for the debates which are tomorrow night and sunday night."

Instead, his campaign sent out a fundraising e-mail today asking for help so that they could compete in South Carolina, where the Republicans will vote on January 19.

Can this strategy have any hope of working, with Mike Huckabee already having won Iowa, taken the lead in South Carolina polls, and on the whole occupied the role of the Southern conservative candidate? Quite frankly, it's starting to sound like Rudy Giuliani's improbable February 5 strategy — but on a smaller, less ambitious scale.

It's rare that a candidate runs an ad that names the kind of people who are donating to him, but Ron Paul has managed to make it work. His new ad in New Hampshire and South Carolina boasts that he is a candidate who supports the troops, and in return the troops have financially supported him more than the other candidates:

There are two ways to read this ad: That Paul is in fact a patriotic man, despite what you may have heard about his anti-war stance — or that ironically, Paul is engaging in a militaristic pitch, claiming the collective endorsement of the troops and urging civilians to fall in line behind it.

American Research Group has their first daily tracking poll out for New Hampshire, composed of data collected before the Iowa Caucus — thus making it an effective benchmark for measuring the changes in days to come. Here are the numbers, as compared to their previous poll from last week:

Democrats:
Clinton 35% (+4)
Obama 31% (+4)
Edwards 15% (-6)
Richardson 5% (+0)

Republicans:
McCain 35% (+5)
Romney 25% (-5)
Huckabee 12% (+1)
Paul 9% (+2)
Giuliani 8% (-1)

ARG's final Iowa poll was amazingly off the mark, but their real specialty is polling in New Hampshire, where they are based. So this one is probably worth taking seriously, with their solid record in local elections.

This is fun. In yet another sign of how high the stakes of the coming New Hampshire primary have grown for both Mitt Romney and John McCain, Romney laid into the Arizona Senator today as follows:

“There’s no way that Senator McCain is going to be able to come to New Hampshire and say that he’s the candidate that represents change -- that he’ll change Washington. He is Washington,” Mr. Romney said while speaking to reporters on Friday.

In response to Romney's claim that there's "no way" McCain could present himself as the candidate of "change," the McCain campaign dug up an absolute gem that they're now circulating among reporters.

Camp McCain found a quote from 2002, when Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts, in which Romney said precisely the opposite thing about McCain -- that he has always represented change:

One of the reasons the people of America honor Senator McCain and why I'm so proud to have him standing with me today is that he has brought American values to the debate on the issues we care about.

He has always stood for reform and change.

Whoever in McCain's camp dug up this beauty really did earn his or her money today.

In the wake of her humbling loss to Obama in Iowa yesterday, Hillary is planning to start drawing sharper "contrasts" between herself and the Illinois Senator in the days leading up to next week's New Hampshire primary -- and little by little, details are leaking out about Camp Hillary's evolving strategy.

Here's a quick rundown on what we're learning:

* Hillary aides are reportedly studying whether they can hit Obama on gun control, an issue where Obama has taken a hard line that might turn off some New Hampshire voters.

* Hillary, who isn't known for frequent Q and As with reporters, made herself extensively available to them in New Hampshire today, and quickly made it clear that she would now get serious about "drawing contrasts" with her "leading opponents." This was apparently part of a concerted effort on the Hillary camp's part to prevent Obama from coasting off his Iowa victory.

* Bill Clinton will spend the next five days campaigning for Hillary in New Hampshire, though he had reportedly not planned to.

* In another effort to signal that Camp Hillary would be playing rougher in the days ahead, Hillary also said this today:

"Of all the people running for president, I’ve been the most vetted, the most investigated, and my goodness, the most innocent it turns out."

The one thing that no reporter seems to be able to nail down yet is whether Hillary's "contrast drawing" will include negative ads. The Clinton camp won't rule out their use, but no one's been able to confirm precisely what changes in ad strategy are in the cards.

Fresh off their successful predictions for the Iowa Caucus, the first Zogby tracking poll of New Hampshire has come out.

The data comprises phone calls made up through yesterday afternoon, meaning it has no measurement whatsoever of the impact of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee's Iowa wins. However, this is in fact a good thing, as it gives us a benchmark against which to measure poll movement over the next few days:

Democrats:
Clinton 32%
Obama 26%
Edwards 20%
Richardson 7%

Republicans:
McCain 34%
Romney 30%
Huckabee 10%
Giuliani 9%
Paul 7%

Rudy Giuliani, speaking about his sixth place finish in Iowa yesterday:

"None of this worries me -- Sept. 11, there were times I was worried."

As a GOP operative I know loves to say, the man has "9/11 Tourettes." Can't help himself.

John Edwards has a new spot in independent-rich New Hampshire that, interestingly, marries his populism with a trans-partisan message.

"Corporate greed is not just stealing the future of the children of Democrats," Edwards says. "It's doing the same thing to the children of independents; the same thing to the children of Republicans."

With the candidates already stumping in New Hampshire, the thing to watch now is how Edwards and Hillary retool their approaches to adapt to the new political realities that have been created by Obama's seismic win last night.

Today in New Hampshire he employed a contrast with Obama that we haven't heard before:

"I am not the candidate of glitz; I am not the candidate of glamor," Edwards said. "I am the candidate who will fight with every fiber of my being every step of the way."

Edwards' approach now is to cast yesterday's results as simply a Hillary loss and a victory for an abstract desire for change, rather than a victory for Obama, as well as casting the rest of the contest as a head-to-head battle between himself and Obama for that change mantle. Hillary has been airbrushed from the picture, in Edwards' telling.

And as the above references to "glitz" and "glamor" suggest, Edwards wants this contest with Obama to shape up as, "Who can best deliver change -- a lover or a fighter?"

Barack Obama, speaking on the campaign plane after last night's win, offered this analysis of what transpired in Iowa:

"We felt good for the last two weeks because we were so proud of what was happening on the ground. We were seeing the crowds, and so regardless of how the numbers played out exactly, we were really confident about us having changed how politics operated in this caucus. And it makes me very optimistic about the country. I think we can do it for the country as a whole."

Here you see the kernel of Obama's emerging post-Iowa case for his own national electability: The successes he had in Iowa in bringing new demographic groups into his coalition can be duplicated nationwide.

Relatedly, Chris Bowers compares the Iowa entrance polls from 2008 and 2004 and concludes that the new voters Obama brought out were almost all Democrats, not independents, and concludes that Obama won "on the back of the creative class vote" -- young and educated voters, and self-identifying liberals.

Here's another figure from the entrance poll: An astonishing 57% of caucusers were first-time participants. And how did they vote? Barack Obama carried them with 41% of the people going in and before second-choice reallocations, followed by Hillary Clinton at 29% and John Edwards at 18%.

And among the returning caucus-goers? Edwards was carrying them with 30%, with Obama at 26% and Hillary with 24%.

This tells us two things. First, Obama's strategy of bringing in new caucus-goers worked, the first time in recent history where such a strategy actually did so in the caucus. It's a big change from when Howard Dean tried it with less than impressive results. As for Edwards, his problem was that he fought the last war — if the caucus' turnout had been more like 2004, he may well have been the winner.

So how exactly did those much-coveted second-choice votes in the Iowa Caucus work out — did they deliver a victory for Obama through all these mysterious deals? The answer is actually pretty surprising. According to the entrance poll, which only measured first preferences of the participants going in, the numbers were: Obama 35%, Hillary 27%, Edwards 23%.

If we assume that the final state delegate numbers actually approximated the votes of the caucus participants, this means John Edwards was the big second-choice winner, as he boosted his final score by seven points, compared to only three points for Obama and two for Hillary. It was enough to just overtake Hillary for second place, but not enough for first — because it turned out that Obama entered as the clear winner from first choices alone.

John Edwards makes his interpretation as clear as you could possibly want: Though Edwards edged Hillary by a hair, tonight's results represent a rejection of Hillary, and all that's left is a contest between he and Obama.

"What happens now is we go to New Hampshire and other states, where the voters are going to have to decide who, between myself and Senator Obama, can best bring about change," Edwards says.

Separately, The New York Times reports that aides to Hillary say that Bill Clinton will spend the next five days campaigning intensively in New Hampshire on her behalf.

The numbers are final -- with all 1,781 precincts reporting, it's:

Obama: 37.58%

Edwards: 29.75%

Clinton: 29.47%

So, Edwards does come in second, and his team will be making the case that he beat Hillary, despite being outspent by a huge margin. The truth is that it couldn't have been closer, really. But the same reporters and commentators who portrayed this as a two person race -- Obama versus Hillary from the outset -- will now portray Hillary's virtual tie with Edwards for second place as a crushing loss to Hillary.

Joe Biden is dropping out of the race, according to sources familiar with ... oh, heck, according to Joe Biden himself, who said so in a dropout speech a few minutes ago.

A source close to Chris Dodd's campaign tells me that he's expected to drop out of the race later tonight.

Edwards is currently speaking to his supporters, and he declared victory for second place over Hillary, though the full results aren't in.

Here's what's interesting: He interpreted tonight's results as meaning that "change won" -- and went on to characterize the rest of the contest as a fight over who is best suited to deliver change -- he or Obama.

Basically, he's arguing that he main significance of tonight's results is that Hillary lost, which obscures the fact that Obama won decisively over Edwards tonight and that Hillary is far from eliminated. But Edwards is arguing that this race is now about just the two men.

Edwards, his voice hoarse, said: "What happened tonight, is that the Iowa caucus goers said, `We want something different.'"

Now that Obama has been projected as the winner, Edwards adviser Joe Trippi is already out there declaring that the main significance of tonight's race is that Edwards held his own against Hillary.

"It's really a repudiation...of the Clinton campaign," Trippi just said on MSNBC, interpreting tonight's results.

"Clinton doesn't have a lot to talk about," Trippi continued, adding that the vote tonight showed that voters "don't want the status quo that the Clinton campaign represents."

A sign, obviously, that the Edwards campaign wants the story tonight to be all about Hillary's loss, rather than Obama's win.

Both networks just projected an Obama win right now, based on a combo of entrance polls and current precincts reporting.

Chris Matthews just described Obama's projected win as "deliverance."

Earlier today there were reports that the Obama and Richardson camps had reached a deal where Richardson would throw his second-choice supporters to the Illinois Senator.

The Obama camp denied this today. But a little while ago, Obama adviser Samantha Power went on Fox and appeared to admit that such a deal had been reached, saying: "The fact that we got Richardson to basically say that his people should turn towards Obama ... "

But Richardson denied today that any such deal had been cut.

Right now, Hillary, Obama, and Edwards are basically in a statistical dead heat -- each has roughly 32%, with 513 of 1,751 precincts reporting.

A caveat: The small, rural precincts report first, which is why Edwards has been ahead for the early part of the evening. Now they're effectively tied, but it seems likely that the dynamic will shift soon...

Keith Olbermann just got off a good one-liner on Hillary's frequent expectations-depressing claim that an early poll showed her in "single digits" in Iowa.

Olbermann described it as "a poll done so long ago that no archaeological dig can manage to locate it."

MSNBC says that early entrance polls put Hillary and and Obama ahead of Edwards, a development that Tim Russert just said reflects the fact that independents, young people, and women are showing up in much bigger numbers than before.

Caucusing underway.

We're posting the results as they come in on our nifty scoreboard at TPM's homepage. We'll also be doing updates here, too, so check back...

It will never end: Obama gets hit again by questions from a voter in Iowa who doesn't know he's a Christian.

I know fundraising doesn't matter today, what with the actual caucusing and all, but it seems worth noting that the Obama campaign hit the half-million donor mark today.

Total donors, as of right now: 500,190.

Okay, the New Hampshire attorney general's press release on the probe of the anti-Mormon, anti Romney calls has now been released. And the AG has identified the firm behind the calls as Moore Information.

But the AG has not been able to determine who contracted the company for the calls, which obviously is the crucial info here:

Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte is requesting the public’s assistance in identifying who employed Moore-Information of Portland, Oregon to conduct a poll in New Hampshire, in November 2007, which has been alleged to be a push-poll. New Hampshire’s voters deserve to know whether any candidate in our Presidential Primary violated New Hampshire’s push-poll statute.

Apparently Moore Information is dragging its feet and asking for more time before it coughs up info the AG wants that could help her track down the sponsor of the calls. And this info looks like it won't be forthcoming until safely after the January 8th New Hampshire primary.

Had the identity of the sponsor of the calls become known in time, it could have had a big influence on the primary's outcome. Some have charged that John McCain's camp is behind them; others have wondered whether someone connected with Romney himself might have done them, to test anti-Mormon messages or diffuse the Mormon issue by airing it publicly.

According to the AG's release Moore Information outsourced the job to Western Wats, the firm that actually made the calls -- and Wats was tied to Romney in various ways, giving weight to the theory that Romney himself was behind the calls.

More in a bit.

The Times political blog is quoting anonymous sources claiming that there's now a "deal" between Obama and Richardson in which the New Mexico governor will direct his supporters to caucus for Obama.

But the Richardson camp is adamantly denying the report:

Robert Becker, Iowa director of the Bill Richardson for President campaign, took particular offense with reports circulated this morning that his campaign was encouraging non-viable supporters to switch to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

"Here we are the day of caucus and there are all these rumors about deals being made," he said. "I'm just sick of it. We have not directed our supporters to caucus for anyone other than Bill Richardson."

The Obama camp is denying it, too.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that what could actually be going on here is that the Obama people are merely planning an all-out push to win over Richardson voters, which is a natural part of the caucus process.

That's what the New Hampshire attorney general's office has just confirmed to us.

The AG is about to start a press conference, we're told, at which the AG is going to announce preliminary results of their probe into the source of those now-notorious calls raising negatives about Mitt Romney's Mormonism.

The calls became a big issue in the New Hampshire GOP primary, with some politicos charging that John McCain was behind them, while others suggested that someone connected with Romney himself was doing the calls, perhaps to test negatives about his Mormonism or diffuse it as an issue.

The results of the probe could have a major impact on the NH primary, but it's unclear as yet what the AG has found. More as we learn it.

John McCain has a new ad up in New Hampshire, reminiscing about his 2000 primary victory and asking the state's Republican primary voters to put their trust in him once more:

"I've learned a lot in eight years. And I feel better prepared than ever to lead this country," McCain says. "Once again, I need your help."

Here it is: Your Official Election Central Idiot's Guide to the Iowa Democratic Caucuses.

Tonight is the big night when Iowa Democrats will gather in precinct caucuses, normally held in school gymnasiums and other public places, to voice their support for different presidential candidates. So what exactly will they be doing in there?

A Democratic Party caucus is not a conventional primary. Instead, it has its own peculiar processes, with their virtues and deficiencies. For example, it has a form of instant runoff that allows people to initially support minor candidates and then go for a front-runner. On the other hand, the system is undemocratic in that it's only open to people who can show up at 6:30 p.m. and then stay for two hours. And on top of that, there is no such thing as a secret ballot — a participant's vote is made in the full view of his friends, family and neighbors.

But what on earth actually happens, and how does a candidate win?

Our guide to the whole process is after the jump.

Read more »

Mitt Romney has a new ad up in New Hampshire, hitting John McCain in a very gentlemanly way. The ad features New Hampshirites first talking about how much they respect John McCain the human being, with his war record and his commitment to his country — then they go after him on tax cuts and illegal immigration:

If Romney loses to Mike Huckabee tonight in Iowa, he's really going to need more of these ads against McCain in New Hampshire.