No Let-up As Leaders Hit New Hampshire

Leading candidates for the 2008 presidential election last night uprooted a years' worth of political organization in Iowa and departed en masse for New Hampshire to begin campaigning today for the next phase of the race.

The main candidates were to begin flying out of Iowa around midnight local time last night, only hours after the last results had trickled in from the state's more remote rural caucus sites.

The shift of campaign also set off a widespread departure of campaign staff, which for a year had turned a small state into the nerve center of America's political world.

The exit from Iowa, and the shuttering of campaign offices in prime locations in Des Moines, evoked some sadness - as well as relief from Iowans exhausted by the barrage of television advertisements and nightly telephone calls from pollsters.

"Now it's time to say goodbye to all our company," David Yepsen, the political commentator of the Des Moines Register, wrote yesterday in a mock lament for the end of Iowa's power over the presidential race. "We all turn back into toads and pumpkins. No one will much care what we do or think."

For the front runner candidates, last night's caucuses allowed no let-up in the relentless pace of the election campaign.

Hillary Clinton scheduled her first event in New Hampshire, 1,300 miles from Iowa, for 8am local time. Barack Obama had only a slightly less grueling schedule, while Mitt Romney seemed in a race to be the first candidate out of Iowa. He had a welcome event scheduled in New Hampshire for 2am.

His main opponent in Iowa, Mike Huckabee, opted for a good night's sleep and scheduled an afternoon kickoff to his campaign, with Chuck Norris by his side.

With campaigning in New Hampshire only now beginning in earnest, some candidates were trying to get off to a flying start.

Clinton unveiled a new ad in the state, where the latest polls suggest that she has only a slim lead over her Democratic party rival, Obama. Edwards who is in a distant third place, put out his own ad. A CNN opinion poll put Clinton at 34%, Obama on 30% and Edwards on 17%.

The extra effort seemed to be working for John McCain. The Republican senator made a brief visit to Des Moines for an eve-of-caucus rally on Wednesday night. But his focus on New Hampshire has begun to pay dividends in the polls, which show him widening his lead over Romney, who had been favored as an almost native son of the state because of his tenure as a former governor of Massachusetts.

An opinion poll in New Hampshire by Franklin Pierce University/WBC gave McCain 37% of the vote in the state, against 31% support for Romney. Huckabee, a favorite in Iowa, was on 5%.

Romney immediately tried to dampen down expectations that he would carry New Hampshire. "If I don't win, coming in second in these two states puts me in a strong position in Michigan and in the other states," he told ABC television yesterday morning.

Rudy Giuliani, who like McCain largely skipped the Iowa caucus, also appeared unwilling to give ground. He broadcast a new television ad in Florida yesterday, filled with images of gun-toting jihadists and Muslim women in head scarves.

The great migration from Iowa also sees the candidates retune their messages for New Hampshire voters. Democrats were expected to turn up the anti-war rhetoric. Republicans were planning to tone down the talk on values - which had resonated among Iowa's evangelicals - and focus on financial issues.