MANCHESTER, NH — As voters head to the polls Tuesday in New Hampshire for the first-in-the nation Republican presidential primary, expectations count nearly as much as actual votes, leading rivals to question not whether frontrunner Mitt Romney will win but by how much.
It would be difficult for Romney to exceed expectations since he’s polling nearly 20 points ahead of his closest competition.
But a poorer-than-expected showing means Romney could be vulnerable. And that’s what his opponents are counting on.
“The biggest story today is going to be how much Governor Romney falls short of any kind of reasonable expectation because he’s been living here, literally bought a house, was the governor next door for years,” said Romney rival Newt Gingrich. “And people expected this to be his fortress. I think it’s not going to be much of a fortress.”
For many pollsters, Romney must win with about 37 percent of the vote to match the definition of blowout required by those evaluating the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign.
While Romney’s polling has been slipping in the past week, the Suffolk University/7News tracking poll Tuesday showed Romney polling at 37 percent, nearly 20 percentage points over his next nearest competitor, Ron Paul.
According to the poll of 500 likely voters surveyed over Sunday and Monday, Romney earned 37 percent over Paul’s 18 percent while Jon Huntsman gained 16 percent, Rick Santorum garnered 11 percent, Gingrich took nine percent and Rick Perry and Buddy Roemer, who hasn’t registered high enough in the polls to qualify for the debates, each earned one percent.
Seven percent are undecided.
“Mitt Romney may beat his closest competitor by a two- to-one margin,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, noting that the race is really for second place.
Andy Smith, a pollster for the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center, told FOX News that anything below 35 percent for Romney could be perceived as a weakness that his opponents can exploit, especially since 78 percent of those surveyed in the latest WMUR/UNH poll said they expect Romney to win on Tuesday.
“If he can’t come close to 50 percent here, it’s very unlikely that he can sweep the nomination,” Gingrich said. “I think that gives the party time to take a deep breath and realize that maybe this isn’t the right guy to run against Obama.”
Smith said managing expectations — and making sure that supporters actually go to the polls — is Romney’s biggest challenge.
But Pollster Frank Luntz, a FOX News analyst who has been tracking audience reaction during the debates, said he’s never supported the “conventional wisdom” that Romney has to win with 37 percent of the vote or better before heading into South Carolina, which votes on Jan. 21.
“As you know, the conventional wisdom is usually wrong,” Luntz told FOX News.
He said all Romney has to do is win by double digits because South Carolina is not going to make the decision based on New Hampshire’s vote.
“They’re going to make the decision based on the FOX News debate that’s coming up in a week,” Luntz said in a plug to the Jan. 16 debate being held in conjunction with the South Carolina Republican Party.
Managing expectations about his own performance, Santorum told FOX News on Tuesday that he would be pleased to end up in the middle of the pack in this state.
“That would show we have the momentum,” Santorum said, adding that if he outperforms expectations, eventually the race will be cobbled down to two people, himself and Romney.
“When that happens, the game will really be on at that point because then conservatives will have a choice and I am very confident we’ll pull this race out,” he said.
Huntsman, who is also trying to surpass expectations and could pull a strong third, is trying to score high by reaching beyond the GOP to registered independents who are allowed to vote in the GOP primary.
“I’m feeling really good about this,” Huntsman told FOX News Tuesday. “There’s an energy on the street that’s very real and I can’t wait to see what it all means tonight.”
“I was talking about as you know insurance companies,” Romney said as he fought through the crowd with his wife, Ann, and son Craig. “We all like to get rid of our insurance companies.”
Romney’s campaign was also defending the White House hopeful from his GOP foes’ continued attacks on his business record at venture capital investment company Bain Capital.
Taken together, the assault has left Romney’s team tense going into a night they hoped would be a celebration of an overwhelming victory that would contribute to the perception that the former Massachusetts governor would inevitably become the Republican nominee.
Instead, when Romney reached out to hold a supporter’s baby daughter, the shouts were angry. “Are you going to fire the baby?” someone yelled over the din.
Others shouted, “We want Mitt!”
Romney’s staffers tried to guide him through the crush of reporters shouting questions at him and had to shove people out of the way to open the door of Romney’s SUV. His daughter-in-law was left behind in the crowd, and Romney moved a meeting with volunteers to a different, unannounced location.
He had no other public events planned until Tuesday evening.
Romney has led in opinion polls here for months — in recent days by 20 percentage points or more. He’s been pushing for an overwhelming victory as he looks to South Carolina, a state where the conservative GOP base was uncomfortable with him in 2008, and strives to wrap up the nomination fight as quickly as possible.
His campaign aides had been most concerned about complacency among supporters, and they launched an intensive get-out-the-vote effort over the weekend, backed by hundreds of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of phone calls.
Romney and his rivals are in many ways already looking to the first-in-the-South contest a little more than a week from now. Gingrich allies are spending millions to run ads attacking Romney’s time heading Bain Capital.
And rival Rick Perry, in South Carolina on Tuesday, said companies like Bain are “vultures” that “swoop in and eat the carcass” of struggling companies.
But the early-morning votes merely foreshadow a busy day in the Granite State, as the GOP presidential candidates make their final case to voters there.
The first five-minute voting session kicked off in the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch, whose residents are famous for being the first to cast their ballots each election season.
Former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman tied with two votes each in the town. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) each got one. President Barack Obama got three votes.
The small town only has nine registered voters. The nine residents who cast their ballots include three registered Republicans and two registered Democrats. Four other voters have not declared a party.
In the town of Hart’s Location, which has a population of 41, Romney gained a small lead. He received five votes, Paul received four votes, Huntsman two votes and Texas governor Rick Perry and Gingrich each received one, according to WMUR. Obama received 10 votes.
That gave Romney seven votes in total, while Paul picked up five votes. Huntsman had four votes, Gingrich two votes and Perry a lone vote. Obama had 13 in his uncontested race.
Both villages opened their polling places at midnight, a tradition that began so railway workers could vote before their early-morning shifts. The rest of the state started voting at 6:00am Eastern Time and has until 8:00pm Eastern Time to make their decision.
The New Hampshire secretary of state estimated that 250,000 people will have voted in New Hampshire’s GOP primary and 75,000 will have cast a ballot in the Democratic primary when all is said and done.
After a close result last week in the Iowa caucuses, in which Romney bested former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum by a mere eight votes, there is still plenty at stake for the field.
Romney has held onto a commanding lead in the polls, though many voters have remained undecided until now.
Huntsman, after skipping Iowa, is pinning his hopes on a strong finish in New Hampshire, while Santorum looks to capitalize on his near-tie last week with Romney. Polls also showed that Paul has solid support there.
Gingrich, though farther back in the pack after a fourth-place finish in Iowa, has increased his attacks on Romney. He told FOX News Channel on Tuesday that he wants to place in the top three or four and then move to South Carolina, where there will be “a decisive showdown” with the former Massachusetts governor.
Perry, meanwhile, is skipping New Hampshire and banking on a surge in South Carolina and its first-in-the-South primary, scheduled for Jan. 21.
Romney, while still the front-runner, has faced increased scrutiny on the campaign trail about his years heading the venture capital firm Bain Capital. He opened himself to criticism when he declared Monday, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”
The comment referred to health care consumers and insurance companies, as Romney said he wants the freedom to pick his service providers rather than have a national mandate.
While Gingrich has strongly condemned the former governor for a pro-Romney super PAC’s negative television ads in Iowa against him, Gingrich defended his rival from the recent attacks, saying Tuesday, “Of course, it was taken out of context.”