CLAREMONT, N.H. - At 5:55 a.m. yesterday, Ralph Thompson was waiting for the gymnasium doors to open at Stevens High School, so he could secure a good vantage point when Barack Obama addressed a rally two hours later.
Thompson, however, won't be able to vote for the Illinois senator in today's first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential primary. The 69-year-old photographer drove six hours from his home in Canandaigua, N.Y., checked into a local motel, and arose hours before dawn to attend the rally.
Thompson said he's a faithful voter but for the first time he can recall, he's excited by a candidate. "There's somebody to break that mold and step off in a new direction," said Thompson, one of a small number of African-Americans in the crowd of more than 1,000, most of them high school students who won't be able to vote today. In November, Obama drew about 450 at the same gym, according to Rich Plourde, the building manager.
In part because of the Obama factor, the Democrats' leading presidential candidates have been drawing enormous crowds compared with their Republican counterparts, since touching down in the Granite State after Thursday's Iowa caucuses.
Obama, the caucus winner, and Hillary Clinton, who finished third, have drawn crowds that sometimes reach 2,000 or 3,000 since landing in the Granite State early Friday. Their rallies at Nashua North High School, on successive days over the weekend, caused miles-long traffic jams.
Attendance at yesterday's events was down from the weekend highs, but the enthusiasm gap persisted in favor of the Democrats. At a midday rally for Clinton in Dover, the fire marshal closed the doors to the gym of the McConnell Center when it hit its legal capacity of 582. Another 180 people were in an overflow room, and about 150 were turned away, Clinton told the crowd. John Edwards, who finished second in Iowa and has been running third in New Hampshire polls, drew about 250 people to a midmorning event in Laconia.
The day after Iowa, Secretary of State William Gardner predicted a record turnout of about 500,000 today, including a projected 150,000 independents likely to break 3 to 2 for Democrats. In the 2000 primary, which set the previous turnout record of just under 400,000, more independents voted in the GOP race.
"I think the last time I felt like this was when I was a kid on Christmas Eve and I knew I was going to get a bicycle in the morning," Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said.
Once dependably Republican, New Hampshire has recently been tilting Democratic, especially in 2006, when Democrats defeated both GOP congressmen.
Fergus Cullen, chairman of the state's Republican Party, attributed a lot of the Democratic enthusiasm to the Obama phenomenon. "This is a very competitive state," he said. "There's just a lot of buzz about Obama."
On the Republican side, Senator John McCain of Arizona has drawn the largest crowds - his 100th town hall meeting Saturday in Peterborough was crammed beyond its 640 capacity and the fire marshal turned about 200 away.
Yesterday, McCain's revived campaign was in "Mac Is Back" rally mode. A 2:30 event in front of the State House in Concord drew about 400 by Cullen's estimate. The crowd was a bazaar of political activism, including a large contingent of sign holders for McCain's GOP rivals, especially Ron Paul, and many placard-carriers for other causes - opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens and the war in Iraq, and advocates for healthcare reform.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, McCain's chief rival today in New Hampshire, has been drawing steady crowds of around 300 at his events, but last night he drew a capacity crowd of about 450 in Bedford, with another 100 unable to get in.
At the Clinton rally in Dover, David and Therese Bergstrom of Stratham were the last to enter the gym before the marshal shut the doors. The Bergstroms are longtime primary voters, and attending these events is part of their vetting process. Self-described moderate independents, they said they were undecided after attending a jam-packed Obama event in Exeter on Sunday night but before hearing Clinton and McCain, whom they planned to see in Exeter last night before making their final decision.
"We take this job very seriously," David Bergstrom said. Like many in the crowd, Therese Bergstrom, a marketing research executive, took time off from work to attend.
