Rock-Solid Granite State Totals

Good weather and hard-fought races produced a record number of votes for a New Hampshire presidential primary.

The numbers shocked New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner, even though he had predicted a record.

"Holy mackerel," he said as the total printed out on his adding machine. He punched in the numbers again to make sure, and they were the same.

In the Republican primary, 238,606 votes were cast for president; Gardner had predicted 191,000.

"I said it would be a record, but this is a record record," he said. "This is a remarkable turnout."

In the Democratic primary, 154,639 votes were cast; he had predicted 160,000.

Gardner predicted 351,000 of the state's 738,000 registered voters would cast ballots. His tally Wednesday was 393,245, surpassing 1992's previous record of 348,303 by more than 10 percent.

The official figures gave John McCain a 115,606 to 72,330 victory over George W. Bush. In percentages, McCain trounced Bush, 48 to 30 percent.

In the Democratic race, Al Gore attracted 76,897 votes to Bill Bradley's 70,502, a 50 percent to 46 percent Gore victory.

Steve Forbes won 30,166 votes to come in third in the GOP race at 13 percent. Alan Keyes was fourth with 15,179, or 6 percent.

Gary Bauer was last among the major candidates still in the race with 2,040 votes or .1 percent.

Elizabeth Dole, who dropped out of the race before any ballots were cast, attracted 231 write-in votes on the GOP ballot.

Interestingly, 3,320 Democrats wrote in McCain and 998 wrote in Forbes. Another 827 picked Bush on the Democratic ballot.

Among Republicans, 1,025 wrote in Bradley and 1,155 wrote in Gore.

Gardner could not estimate a percentage of turnout because some people vote only for vice president and others take a ballot and don't vote at all, he said.

The turnout will be slightly higher than the 393,245 presidential votes.

Figuring a percentage turnout will take some time because there is no count yet of people who registered at the polls on Tuesday, he said.

He said it also will take a few days for towns registering new residents to notify voters' previous hometowns of their move and have the names deleted from the previous voter list.

New Hampshire lets undeclared voters cast ballots in either party primary. Gardner expected 81,000 independents to vote Tuesday; that is 23 percent if the total vote was 351,000. There was no indication of how many voted, or in which primary.

Shortly before the primary, the state had 198,000 registered Democrats, 266,000 Republicans and 275,000 independents.