New Hampshire Primary; Mitt Romney Expected to Win
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The presidential race has been won by Governor Ronald Reagan of California.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st president of the United States.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor Clinton is now President Bill Clinton.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Too close to call.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There it is, George W. Bush reelected.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Barack Obama, president-elect of the United States.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is</s>CNN. WOLF BLITZER, HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": The 2012 candidates are getting their shot at making history.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "AC 360": The last votes in the first primary of the year are being cast right now.</s>ANNOUNCER: Tonight, round two for Republicans in "The Fight To Be President".</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Game on.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Survivors of the closest Iowa caucus in history face off in the front-runner's backyard.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can we do better here in New Hampshire?</s>ANNOUNCER: Who comes in second may be as important as who comes in first.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have a chance to change the world.</s>ANNOUNCER: It's New Hampshire's choice. Mitt Romney is aiming for another win by hammering the president.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This president is a crony capitalist.</s>ANNOUNCER: But Romney's opponents want to tear him down.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This would be the weakest front-runner in history.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't settle for someone who can win, but then can't do.</s>ANNOUNCER: It's a brutal battle to beat Mitt Romney. Ron Paul came close in Iowa.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Freedom is popular.</s>ANNOUNCER: Rick Santorum came even closer.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the campaigns say they need your help. I need your help.</s>ANNOUNCER: Will they go the distance or will these three candidates catch up by going on the attack?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are people out of work down there because of what Mitt Romney and Bain Capital did.</s>ANNOUNCER: Who will be left standing after New Hampshire when the road to the White House veers south?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Say enough, Mr. President. You are not the emperor.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Folks, we are going to take America back.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm prepared to take Obama on.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not being led.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are coming together.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This election is about the soul of America, folks.</s>ANNOUNCER: It's another decision day in America and the people have the power.</s>BLITZER: I'm Wolf Blitzer at the CNN Election Center. We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. There's only one hour left of voting in New Hampshire and six Republican candidates are anxiously waiting for the results. Mitt Romney is certainly favored to win, but second place is up for grabs and there's an intense fight underway to be Romney's main challenger. Tonight, our ballot cameras will show you democracy in action. We're going to speak to voters, track the ballots, and watch a small town count its votes by hand. And our campaign cameras will take you behind the scenes with the Romney and Huntsman teams working to get out the votes before the last polls close. We have the most cameras in the most locations. Our correspondents certainly out in force including Candy Crowley and Soledad O'Brien. They're watching what's going on -- Soledad, first to you.</s>SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, we're at Amherst (ph) Street Elementary School, which is where Ward Three in Nashua, New Hampshire votes. They opened the polling here at 6:00 in the morning, but they will stay later than anybody else until 8:00. That's partly because of a provision in the city charter. They tell us they expect 35 percent voter turnout of about 4,800 registered voters. That is consistent with what we're seeing, but we have an hour to go until the polls close, 8:00, Wolf, they will close the doors and then tally results and tell us who's won -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: We'll count down together with you, Soledad. Candy Crowley is over at Mitt Romney's headquarters. What's going on, Candy?</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: They certainly are expecting a win here tonight in Romneyland, Wolf, but equally as important, who will place and who will show. And going forward from here, is there anyone who can stand in Mitt Romney's way? That's why New Hampshire voters right now are setting the table -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Certainly are, Candy, stand by for that. As always, Anderson Cooper will be with us every step of the way -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: That's right, Wolf. Less than an hour from now, the last open polling places are going to close. We already have results from two very small towns that traditionally vote overnight. In Dixville Notch, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman tied with two votes each. In Hart's location, Romney won with five votes. As new results come in, John King is going to map them out at the "Magic Wall" and Erin Burnett is going to break them down for us at the polling center -- first let's go to John -- John.</s>JOHN KING, HOST, "JOHN KING USA": Anderson, thanks. You mentioned Dixville Notch, Hart's location. They've already filled in on the map. Remember four years ago, the map showed the big surprise when Hillary Clinton surged late to beat Barack Obama. Will that happen tonight? Well here are some key places to look in the state of New Hampshire. If you come down here to the southern part of the state, remember Mitt Romney is the former Massachusetts governor. A lot of Massachusetts transplants down here, a lot of the undeclared voters, the so-called Independents who are allowed to vote in the Republican primary. Romney needs to do well down here in this part of the state. Over here, the most Democratic area of the state. If Ron Paul is going to reproduce some of that Iowa magic, the Dartmouth College campus will be one place he gets votes and will all the attacks on Romney this week work? Watch Manchester down in here, pretty blue- collar voters there. If the attacks on Romney as a heartless capitalist are beginning to take a toll, we will see it right there -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: John thanks very much. Erin Burnett has exit poll information. You got some early exit poll information, what are you seeing?</s>ERIN BURNETT, HOST, "OUTFRONT": All right, well here's what we're seeing so far interesting and obviously a stark contrast to Iowa, everyone. Views on fiscal issues, taxes and spending, I saw this in Manchester yesterday talking to folks. You see very conservative here, 67 percent of voters very or somewhat conservative on fiscal issues, stark contrast to Iowa though on the other category. We're going to break this down, let you know who -- where these votes are going, but when you look at social issues such as abortion, 60 percent in New Hampshire moderate or liberal, so we'll see what that means for someone like Rick Santorum tonight -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: Right and we've been seeing reaction to Rick Santorum on the campaign trail, very different than what we saw in Iowa in terms of social issues. Our analysts are going to help us put all this in perspective. Gloria Borger, David Gergen are working their sources, along with the "Best Political Team" here in the Election Center and out in the field including top strategists from past presidential campaigns -- a lot to cover, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Anderson, thank you. Let's check in some of our reporters out at various campaign headquarters right now. Dana bash is at Ron Paul headquarters. Jim Acosta is at Jon Huntsman's headquarters. Candy Crowley, as you know, is at Romney headquarters. Candy, let me go back to you for a moment. Is there going to be a big crowd over there? You got a big room, a little room, set the scene for us.</s>CROWLEY: Well let me see if I can sort of step out of the way and try to give you an idea of how small this room is. There is in fact, I don't know David if you can do it, the podium is right behind me and there are going to be more people to the side and behind Mitt Romney than in front of him. It's one of these smaller rooms. I've seen for what clearly is expected to be a victory celebration. It was even smaller than Des Moines and we thought the Des Moines room couldn't get smaller, by the way. They are here. They've got their confetti cannons. They clearly expect a win. And I will tell you that the picture will look great. And we all know that the message coming out of New Hampshire is for the rest of the country, it's for South Carolina, it's for Florida. So the picture will look great, but it is a very tight and small room, Wolf, and but -- it will nonetheless be a victory celebration.</s>BLITZER: Certainly we'll -- assuming he wins and we all assume that will be the case. Let's go to Jim Acosta right now. He's at Jon Huntsman's headquarters. They would love to come in second tonight. There's going to be a fight for second we assume between Huntsman and Ron Paul.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Wolf. It is New Hampshire or bust for Jon Huntsman. He has bet big on this state. One indication of that they actually moved their national campaign headquarters to this room where I'm standing right now in Manchester. I'm joined now by campaign spokesman Jake Suski and Jake, you were telling me just a few moments ago that this nerve center which is sort of like the little engine that could, it's picked up an activity in the last couple of days.</s>JAKE SUSKI, HUNTSMAN CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN: Absolutely. Just a few days ago, we were at seven percent in the polls. The governor did his 160th event in this state and all of a sudden after strong performances in the debate people are really responding. They're responding to this country first moment in the debate with Mitt Romney and his message about restoring trust and dealing with our economic deficit.</s>ACOSTA: OK. Thanks very much, Jake, and earlier today I had a chance to talk to Jon Huntsman and I asked him about the expectations here, Wolf. He was very honest. He was very blunt. He said if we don't do well here, make no mistake, things might change for his campaign -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right, we'll check back with you. Dana Bash is over at Ron Paul's headquarters right now. Dana, what's the scene like over there?</s>DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well the scene is we're in -- Candy talked about it being a relatively small room for Mitt Romney. It's also very small here. This is where Ron Paul supporters are going to be coming relatively soon. They're going to be standing and they're going to be watching the stage. We talk about the fact that Ron Paul says that he has a consistent message. Well guess what, this is also consistent. You remember I was on the stage last week, same podium, same placard (ph), same background, even the same balloons and the idea is that he is hoping that he does better than what he did in Iowa. He did third in Iowa, was very good, but they're really hoping inside the Paul campaign that he gets a strong second because what that means for Ron Paul is the ability to raise more money and to keep the campaign going for the long haul. This is not somebody who wants to give up by any means whatsoever. I'm hearing from inside the war room, which is really buzzing as well inside the Paul campaign that they are feeling very good with the numbers that they are seeing and they feel that their message is really playing here in terms of their libertarian sensibility. That really plays well in this "Live Free or Die" state. Before I go back to you, Wolf, I just want to give you a behind the scenes look for our viewers as well. This is -- you know you saw it back there, what we always see, the candidate on the stage. But this is what the candidate sees, the sea of cameras. This is the view that they get when they give their speech, whether it's a happy speech or whether it's a little bit of a disappointment. This is what they see. Pretty good showing of cameras here and this is pretty much what I think you would see at all of the candidate's headquarters across the state today.</s>BLITZER: I love it when you take us behind the scenes like that, Dana. Thanks very much. Let's bring in Dan Lothian right now. He's over at Chichester, New Hampshire. Dan, you're at a polling station. Walk us through what's going on because I see they're already counting ballots.</s>DAN LOTHIAN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: They are, Wolf, but in fact let's just spin around if we can. This is the box where all the ballots were in right there. They just opened up that box a while ago. They set up these tables here with 12 volunteers. Now, there are a lot of small towns around the state of New Hampshire that have decided not to do the electronic way of counting, so instead they bring in volunteers like you see here. They set up these tables. Put a dozen volunteers and the first thing that they're doing right now is that they're separating all of the different pieces of paper and then they'll be counting the paper. They're not looking right now at the color or whose name is on there, who's on the ballot right now. They're just making sure that they have an accurate count of all the pieces of paper. Then they are separating them. They will be separating them as you've seen some of the workers here, volunteers separating the pink ones and the blue ones, pink ones being Republican, blue ones being Democrat. It is a long process that will take about an hour and a half at these tables right here where they'll be tabulating all of the different ballots that they have. First of all, they'll separate them by the Democrats and Republicans and then they'll separate them by the candidates. The major candidates and then the minor candidates and then out loud, we will be able to witness them giving the count. There are two people here, so you always have someone backing you up. It's a redundancy system here because they want to make sure that everything that they do is very accurate and after they're done, they'll announce the number, take it downstairs, fill out the paperwork, and a police officer will take the ballots from here all the way to Concord -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: This transparency is great and our viewers get a chance to see what's going on. Dan thanks very, very much. Vote results are in fact coming in and you can see the latest numbers right at the bottom of your screen. Stand by for more live ballot cams as the votes are counted. We'll also check in with our own John King. He's over at the "Magic Wall". He's tracking the votes county-by-county -- our coverage only just beginning.