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Striving to avoid a second consecutive loss, the Republican candidate scheduled six events and an end-of-the-day rally as he tried to stage a comeback amid polls showing him falling behind Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
Iowa's GOP winner, Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, said he wasn't counting on winning a top spot in New Hampshire's primary Tuesday. "If we come in anywhere in the third and fourth slot, we're going to do great. I'd like to do better than that, but you have people who have had a lot more money spent here," he told CNN.
Front-runner Democrat Barack Obama worked to hand Hillary Rodham Clinton her second defeat, and Clinton, trying avoid a second consecutive loss to Obama, took to the airwaves with a series of television interviews in which she questioned the substance behind the Illinois senator's soaring rhetoric.
The New York Democrat said Obama "is a very talented politician" but "if he's going to be competing for president
-- and especially to get the Democratic nomination and go up against whomever the Republican put up
-- I think it is really time to start comparing and contrasting him as I have been scrutinized for all of this year," she told ABC's "Good Morning America."
"I find the manner in which they've been running their campaign sort of depressing lately," Obama said on the same program.
Edwards was closing out his New Hampshire campaign with an all-night bus tour of the state. He had early morning stops planned for Berlin, Littleton and Claremont, with 10 more events throughout the day and evening. "While everyone else goes to bed tonight," Edwards told a Nashua audience Sunday, "I'm going to be out working."
Romney's first stop was the entrance of BAE Systems North America, where he found reporters and camera crews far outnumbered arriving workers. The former Massachusetts governor largely ignored the crowd, instead talking with Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., about the prior evening's debate.
That prompted Romney to plead, "We need some voters."
Fire marshals from Manchester south to Salem and east to Exeter had to shut the doors to each of Obama's five rallies on Sunday, as crowds flocked to see the Illinois senator who took a step last week toward becoming the first black president with a decisive win in the Iowa caucuses.
"Something is stirring in the air, New Hampshire, something is going on," Obama said in Keene, where more people crammed into an overflow auditorium than could fit in the high school cafeteria where he appeared.
Clinton, the former first lady trying to become the first female president, sought to revive her campaign by casting Obama
-- with less than one term in Congress -- as long on rhetoric but short on substance.
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 "You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton told a raucous rally in Nashua.
Huckabee, fresh off the Iowa caucus win, conceded that McCain had the best shot at New Hampshire. "John McCain's been campaigning here for a long time. He has a big base from eight years ago," when he was a presidential contender, Huckabee said.
A new survey showed Obama opening a wide lead over Clinton, while the Republican race remained a statistical dead heat.
Obama had 41 percent, up from 32 percent in mid-December, in a new USA Today/Gallup poll. Clinton was at 28 percent, down from 32 percent. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards had 19 percent, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had 6 percent, and no other candidate had 3 percent.
On the Republican side, McCain had 34 percent, up from 27 percent in mid-December, while Romney had 30 percent, down from 34 percent. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was third with 13 percent, while Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani were tied at 8 percent. No other candidate, including former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, who conceded Sunday he was focusing on South Carolina rather than New Hampshire, was above 3 percent.
Both surveys had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points, a small enough gap to consider the GOP race tied.
While the Iowa results influenced the demeanor of the candidates in a campaign shortened to five days by this year's compacted election calendar, New Hampshire residents have a history of keeping their own counsel in their first-in-the-nation primary.
"Undeclareds" make up the majority of registered voters in the state, and those independents are free to vote in either primary on Tuesday. Romney aides hoped for a surge in favor of Obama, denying McCain the independent votes that catapulted him past Bush in 2000.
Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. EST, and the weather forecast for Tuesday was favorable: mostly cloudy and mild.
[Associated
Press; By GLEN JOHNSON]
Associated Press Writers Nedra Pickler, Liz Sidoti, Charles Babington, Beth Fouhy, Libby Quaid, Holly Ramer and Philip Elliott contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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