For Obama, much tighter race than expected

Narrow loss threatens his momentum

Barack Obama was embraced by his wife, Michelle, after he conceded the primary to Hillary Clinton last night in Nashua. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

NASHUA - Barack Obama conceded his first loss to Hillary Clinton last night, a defeat that shocked supporters who had grown confident in the final hours before the election, as polls had shown Obama well ahead of Clinton and on his way to his second-straight win.

"We've been asked to pause for a reality check, we've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope," Obama told supporters at his election night party at Nashua High School South.

"But in the unlikely story that is America, there is nothing that has ever been false about hope."

Obama vowed to press on in the states ahead.

"When we are facing down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."

The crowd exploded, echoing: "Yes, we can! Yes, we can!"

It was an election night that stretched on for hours. Early returns made the race too close to call. When large television screens showed CNN reporting that the Associated Press had called the race for Clinton, some in the crowd booed and hissed.

But the mood improved dramatically after Obama's speech.

"As much as everybody loves us, we're a small state," said Rachel Lipman, a 28-year-old secretary from Nashua. "There's a whole big country out there."

Clinton's win was all the more pivotal because she beat expectations, and that may slow Obama's momentum as he heads to South Carolina. Despite his loss, Obama drew passionate support from thousands of New Hampshire voters who said they felt inspired by a candidate who stirred their hopes about the country's future and were drawn to his soaring rhetoric and his appeals for national unity.

"He's a combination of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln," declared Emilie Phelps, 60, a nurse and government worker in Concord.

"They were men of conviction, they inspired and moved the nation."

John Martin, a 79-year-old retired bus driver who wrote Obama's name in on his Republican ballot, said he was won over by Obama's promises to end partisan bickering in Washington.

"One has one side, the other has the other side, and the American people are the losers," Martin said.

But in the closing days of the race, when many voters were still making up their minds, Clinton campaigned hard. In a departure from her recent practice, Clinton spent hours answering questions from voters. Obama drew massive crowds but did not take questions, relying instead on his stump speech to connect with people. That may have made a difference in the famously independent Granite State.

Paula Cerilli, 52, an independent voter from Manchester, was a Clinton supporter who found herself unexpectedly tugged toward Obama after seeing him at an event with Oprah Winfrey in Manchester last month. But in the end, she went with Clinton. "He's dynamic, he's fabulous, whatever," Cerilli said. "But he didn't have enough substance behind him. She has more experience. That is what was important to me."

Similarly, Martin's wife, Gloria, said she was torn between Obama and Clinton but finally went with her "gut feeling" that she should go with Clinton. "I like what she says, and I think it's time someone else got in there with a different view other than what the men want," she said.

As in Iowa, Obama's appeal to younger voters and people who had not previously been involved in politics anchored his campaign in New Hampshire.

Angela and Sarah Spoto, 18-year-old twins and campaign volunteers from Hampton Falls, cast their first-ever votes for Obama yesterday. As evening fell, they were camped out outside Obama's victory party.

"He really believes in the people, that we can make a difference," Angela Spoto said. "He's more real than any of the other candidates," her sister said.

Turnout was massive throughout the state, especially among those who had not voted before. In Manchester's 1st Ward, the line for new voters was far longer than the one for registered voters.

"This is the biggest we have ever seen," said Kimberly Hardwick, a poll worker.

But the Clinton campaign also brought out new young voters. Nicole Gagne, 20, a first-time voter and a student at the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord, said she listened carefully to the Democrats' debates and decided to go with Clinton.

"I think we need somebody who is familiar with the issues and familiar with Washington, and someone who has the guts to stand up and change things," she said.

Another question that will probably be asked in the postmortems of the race is whether John McCain drew independent votes away from Obama at the last minute. When she arrived at the polls in Hopkinton yesterday, Dorcas Kirsch, an undeclared voter in her 50s, told friends supporting Obama that she planned to support McCain.

"I want to go with him, but I don't want Mitt Romney going in," she told them.

The Obama supporters standing outside the polls brought her back to their camp, but others like her might not have switched back. Obama, whose speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston catapulted his popularity, was already well-known in New Hampshire when he started running for president. On his first visit to the state as a possible presidential candidate in December 2006, about 1,500 turned out to see him speak at a hotel in downtown Manchester.

But building a ground organization here was a challenge. Clinton's campaign attracted many of the most experienced Democratic campaign operatives and the lion's share of its top political establishment, including both leaders of the state Legislature.

The Obama campaign slowly built up its ranks at the grass roots, said Ann McLane Kuster, a Democrat on Obama's statewide steering committee and the chair of New Hampshire Women for Obama. They created groups working on different policy areas the environment, women's issues, education, foreign policy, healthcare, and so forth, and organizers slowly began drawing people into the campaign through existing social networks, attracting many who had never been involved in politics before.

By last Friday, the campaign's field staff for Hopkinton and the surrounding towns essentially moved into the home of state Representative Christine Hamm, which served as a staging area for volunteers from New Hampshire and across the country carrying out the campaign's phone banking, yard sign distribution, and canvassing efforts over the last four days. In Hopkinton, organizers said they were trying to visit the home of every single voter identified as an Obama voter twice on election day.

"I've never seen, on the day of an election, anything as well-run as this," she said. But it was the Clinton ground operation that prevailed.