New Hampshire Primary Results 2012: Mitt Romney Wins
New Hampshire Primary Results 2012: Mitt Romney Wins: Mitt Romney was quickly recognized as a winner in New Hampshire on Tuesday night in the primary, cementing his status as Republican presidential favorite after his paper-thin victory in Iowa last week.
Former Massachusetts governor is the first in the history of Republican who is not incumbent to win both Iowa and New Hampshire, and Romney supporters hope he can easily finish here will send a signal to the party, that it is time to unite behind him.
But Romney’s margin of victory is far from clear at this early hour, and a narrower-than-expected result – or beating expectations for performance by one of his rivals – still has the potential to get out of the race in South Carolina and beyond.
With just 14 percent of reporting stations, Romney pulled nearly 36 percent of the vote, and then Ron Paul at 24 percent, John Hunter on 18 percent and Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and hovering around the 10 percent mark. Both NBC and Fox News projected that second place Paul will hold once all the votes in.
Romney and Paul were considered likely to be completed in the first and second places, respectively, so that the race for the third took on outsized importance.
The rise of hunter and hope the other candidates who have received at the end of the process, the exit polls released on television networks showed that about 46 percent of voters said they decided in the last days of the New Hampshire campaign.
Two statistical reports CBS News said Romney’s advantage in the state, however: 60 percent of voters called the economy the most important issue in the race, while 33 percent said the most important quality of a candidate was his ability to beat President Barack Obama.
On the electability of the two pillars of the economy and the campaign message Romney, his opponents seem to have been fighting on unfriendly ground here in the Granite State.
Indeed, even before the return came in the rest of the field was already preparing for January 21 primary in South Carolina, casting it as a true test of the GOP favorite to connect with the conservative base. 
“We will be dividing the vote, and I think it will shake itself when we get to South Carolina,” said Gingrich.
“These other states to winnow down the nomination, if you will,” said Perry, who was campaigning in South Carolina on Tuesday. “They’re kind of the beginning of the separation of grain from the chaff, if you will. But South Carolina elects a president.”
Romney hopes to rebound in New Hampshire, he may land in the State of Palmetto Chapter of steam, which may allow him to essentially kill the field.
“You’re going to make a statement tomorrow. Let’s take it to the next state after New Hampshire,” Romney told the crowds at a rally in Bedford on Monday night. “Give me a raise I need!”
Romney should not only manage expectations in New Hampshire, but he must respond to and assess the damage to several days to withering criticism for its past role in Bain Capital private equity firm, it only intensified storm with verbal slip in which he said he “loved “ability to fire people.
Romney said that he liked to be able to refuse medical services or insurance companies, if they do not meet the expectations of freedom he says President Barack Obama’s health care policy limits, but his opponents continued to pounce on the remark on Tuesday.
Former Governor of Utah Jon Huntsman always pressure in the appearance in Manchester on Tuesday morning.
“If you’re going to make such statements that you have become largely unelectable because if it is not a Republican, this is Chicago machine campaign billion dollars in its sails after comments like that,” Hunter said.
