N.H. independents may hold key to future

Heather and Andy Collins, both independent voters, are a house divided -- torn between Sens. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, and John McCain, the Arizona Republican.

“Those are the two candidates we feel can work [with both parties] and get things done,” said Andy Collins, a carpenter.

The couple said each of them could vote for either Obama or McCain -- but after watching Obama on television and hearing McCain speak in the town square on Monday, they may end up splitting the difference. He’s leaning toward McCain, she’s tilting toward Obama -- but they could still change their minds.

The Collinses mirror thousands of waffling, dithering, agonizing independents across New Hampshire -- many of whom are choosing, paradoxically, between a Democrat who boasts that he was among the first to oppose the Iraq war and a Republican who says he has been more hawkish than President Bush.

The independents may be the key to this election for McCain, who is locked in a tight race with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. A CNN/WMUR poll released Monday showed McCain ahead of Romney 31% to 26%, but most of that margin came from independents, not registered Republicans. Obama has galloped ahead of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) by a larger margin, 39% to 30%, and is also winning largely because of his support from independents, the poll showed.

For McCain, a key factor is whether his independents turn out in big enough numbers to overtake Romney’s supporters, who are being marshaled by a better-funded, well-organized field operation.

Independents, who make up 45% of the electorate here, can vote in either party’s primary -- and they tend to decide late, making them susceptible to last-minute campaign pleas. (An early December Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll showed that 29% of registered voters nationally identify as independents. In California, records show that 19% of voters decline to state a party affiliation.)

That has made them the targets of frenzied campaigning by candidates from both parties. And it has meant that Obama and McCain aren’t merely running against rivals in their own parties; they’re competing with each other for the votes of a handful of independents in the middle. Voters like Barbara Muchi, 60, a retired teacher who has wavered between the two for months.

Obama is “classy, inspired,” she said after hearing him at Nashua’s North High School on Saturday. But she still had doubts. “He’s very uplifting and all, but is it real?” she asked.

So on Sunday, she went to hear McCain speak, and was impressed -- despite her qualms about his support for the war. “I’d like [the war] to be over, but maybe he knows a whole lot more than we realize about why we have to stay there,” she said. She’s leaning toward McCain, she says.

James Fallon, a financial portfolio manager from Salem, also planned to attend events held by both candidates to try to make up his mind. Asked why he narrowed his choices to Obama and McCain, Fallon said it was because both “seem to rise above the nonsense” of partisan politics. He said he’ll probably vote for McCain because of his longer experience. “He demonstrated his ability to bring both parties together in the past,” he said.

The CNN/WMUR poll, which is conducted by the University of New Hampshire, found that both independents and registered Democrats have surged into Obama’s camp since the Illinois senator won the Iowa caucuses last week. Poll results released Monday found Obama essentially tied with Clinton among registered Democrats. But among independents, Obama was leading Clinton by a whopping 45% to 24%.

McCain, too, has been increasing in strength in New Hampshire -- but less dramatically than Obama, the poll indicated. Among Republicans, McCain was barely ahead of Romney, 30% to 28%, a result within the margin of error. Among independents, McCain was ahead of Romney by a larger margin, 34% to 23%. Overall, McCain was ahead of Romney 31% to 26%.

The poll found a large number of voters still trying to make up their minds: 27% of likely Republican primary voters and 21% of likely Democratic primary voters, including both independents and non-independents.

“The final days will prove which campaign has the political organization to turn out their voters,” said UNH Prof. Andrew E. Smith, director of the poll.

“A key to Romney’s strategy is that the primary is going to be dominated by registered Republicans,” not independents, said Fergus Cullen, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

Cullen and other GOP strategists have suggested that Obama’s victory in Iowa could have hurt McCain, because it might draw independents away from the Republican contest to vote for the Democrat.

If Clinton had won in Iowa, they argued, independents who had been leaning toward Obama might have lost interest in the Democratic primary and chosen to vote for McCain instead.

Polls have not detected any significant migration of undeclared voters from McCain to Obama over the last week. Instead, Obama’s gains have come largely at the expense of Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.). But it is impossible to determine from the polls whether Obama voters might have flocked to McCain’s campaign if Obama had lost in Iowa.

Nancy Herman of Londonderry was one Republican-leaning independent who paid attention to Obama’s upset in Iowa. “Everybody keeps talking about him,” she said after she attended an Obama rally in Salem. “I had to look into this before I dismiss it.” But she ruled out McCain. Instead, she was undecided between Obama and Romney.

The most famous moment for New Hampshire independents in recent history came in 2000, when they voted in droves for McCain, helping him to an upset victory over George W. Bush.

But two factors have changed since 2000. First, the state has become more Democratic -- among both registered party members and undeclared independents. In 2004, the state voted for Democrat John F. Kerry over Bush in the presidential election; in 2006, Democrats won both houses of the state Legislature for the first time since 1874.

The second factor has been the war in Iraq, which has been unpopular among New Hampshire independents -- but has been the issue most prominently associated with McCain.

Several independent voters said McCain’s support for the war mainly restrained them from voting for him.

“For a while, I was kind of disappointed in him,” Muchi said. “He was so strong on the war, and so many soldiers were dying.”

But others simply disregarded Iraq, like Terry Lemieux, a 47-year-old mortgage processor. She said she has ruled out Obama because “there’s too much hype around him; I want someone who I don’t think can be bought.” Her favorite candidate, she said, is Edwards, but she doesn’t think he can “go all the way.” Instead, she said she’s supporting McCain. In the last few weeks, she said, the Arizona senator has reminded her of the upstart candidate he was in 2000. “He’s going back to how I liked him before,” she said.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com

Reston reported from New Hampshire and McManus from Washington.