Election 2008: New Hampshire Fights To Keep Ahead

"Just specimens is all New Hampshire has," Robert Frost once wrote. "One each of everything as in a showcase, which naturally she doesn't care to sell."

Next week, New Hampshire will showcase some of its most treasured specimens--the presidential candidates who crisscross the state to woo voters. Manchester's St. Anselm College will hold a debate for the Democratic candidates on Sunday and for the Republican candidates on Tuesday.

The debates show the ongoing importance of the Granite State in presidential politics, despite recent threats to its prominence as the nation's first primary. Arguing that New Hampshire's demographics are not representative of the nation as a whole, the Democratic National Committee moved up the date of Nevada's caucus, putting it between the Iowa caucus on January 14 and before the New Hampshire primary on January 22.

Large states like New Jersey, Florida, and California have also moved their primaries up right behind New Hampshire's, creating a front-loaded schedule that could diminish the relevance of the small New England state.

The debates will also be the first head-to-head test of how the candidates compete in the state's new political environment. New Hampshire's strong aversion to taxes and government interference kept it Republican long after most of New England went Democratic, but the November elections saw the GOP lose both houses of the state legislature and both of the state's seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dante Scala, a politics professor at St. Anselm, says he expects the Democratic wave will put an increased focus on electability for the Republican debate.

"I think Republicans in the state are really spooked by what happened to them in 2006," he says.

For the Democrats, winning New Hampshire voters will require appealing both to their base and to the state's large number of undeclared voters, who can vote in either primary. Early polls indicate that, in a reversal of the 2000 primary, most undeclared voters will pick among the Democrats this time

By Will Sullivan