page_title: Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential primary campaign
section_title: New Hampshire
hierarchical_section_title: Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential primary campaign / Caucuses and primaries 2008 / New Hampshire
caption_attribution_description: Hillary Clinton greets supporters after winning the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary.
context_page_description: Hillary Clinton won many primaries, but lost the Democratic Party nomination to Barack Obama during the 2008 United States presidential election.
context_section_description: Polling showed a tight race in the days leading up to the New Hampshire primary. While some polls showed a dead heat between Clinton and Obama, January 6 polls conducted by CNN/WMUR-TV and USA Today/Gallup showed Obama jumping ahead by 10 and 13 points respectively after winning Iowa. All of the candidates campaigned in New Hampshire during the four days after the Iowa caucuses, targeting undecided and independent voters in the state.
  At the ABC News/WMUR-TV Democratic debate in Manchester on January 5, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards all battled over who best exemplified the buzzword of the campaign, "change", with Obama and Edwards teaming up against Clinton. In one noted exchange, Edwards said that Clinton could not bring change, while he and Obama can. "Any time you speak out powerfully for change, the forces for status quo attack." He made clear that he was referring to Clinton, adding, "I didn't hear these kind of attacks from Senator Clinton while she was ahead. Now that she's not we hear them." Clinton passionately retorted: "Making change is not about what you believe; it's not about a speech you make. It's about working hard. I'm not just running on a promise for change. I'm running on 35 years of change. What we need is somebody who can deliver change. We don't need to be raising false hopes." At another point, when one moderator asked Clinton why polls showed she was less "likeable" than other candidates, particularly Obama, she joked tongue-in-cheek, "Well that hurts my feelings ... but I'll try to go on."
  In the wake of the Iowa defeat, the campaign hoped that Bill Clinton could help salvage a win in New Hampshire, where he had achieved a political comeback in his 1992 presidential campaign. As he had in Iowa, the former President campaigned intensively, but his New Hampshire appearances failed to draw large or enthusiastic crowds. On the day before the primary, press reports indicated that Hillary Clinton advisers were pessimistic about the immediate future, thinking it was unlikely she would be able to win either New Hampshire or South Carolina.
  That same morning, Clinton became "visibly emotional" at a stop in Portsmouth, when after a friendly question from a voter about how she kept going on the campaign trail, she said, "It's not easy, and I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do."
  On election day, January 8, 2008, seven different polls led to a win for Obama, by margins from 5 points to 13 points, with an average of 8.3 points. Elegies were published on the Clinton campaign. Weather was good and voter turnout was reported as heavy all day long, with election officials worried they might run out of ballots; the large turnout was expected to favor Obama. During the day and into the evening there were reports of a major shakeup in Clinton's campaign staff scheduled for the next day, in the wake of an expected loss.
  In contrast to expectations, Clinton won New Hampshire gaining about 39 percent of the vote compared to Obama's 36 percent. In her victory remarks to supporters that evening, Clinton said, "I come tonight with a full heart. Over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice." Clinton's win was the first time a woman had ever won a major American party's presidential primary for the purposes of delegate selection. (Shirley Chisholm's prior "win" in New Jersey in 1972 was in a no-delegate-awarding, presidential preference ballot that the major candidates were not listed in and that the only other candidate who was listed had already withdrawn from; the actual delegate selection vote went to George McGovern.)
  The day after her win New Hampshire, Chris Matthews appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe said of Clinton: "I'll be brutal, the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit." The comments were criticized as unfair by such d
caption: Hillary Clinton greets supporters after her New Hampshire Primary win.
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