Bush and Tsongas Lead Races; Tight Vote a Blow to President : Republicans: Voters in New Hampshire favor the incumbent, 56% to 43%, in early returns. The result is interpreted as indicating deep dissatisfaction.

New Hampshire Republicans delivered a stunning rebuke to President Bush on Tuesday night at the close of a tempestuous primary campaign that was cast as a referendum on the Bush presidency.

The President appeared headed for victory over conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan in the nation’s first primary, but the margin was far smaller than either campaign had imagined.

With 26% of the precincts reporting, Bush had 17,444 votes, or 56%, compared to 13,394, or 43% for Buchanan.

The outcome was interpreted here, where voters are coping with a ravaged economy, as a display of deep dissatisfaction with Bush.

Bush appeared destined to emerge from the primary bruised and embarrassed, his campaign acknowledging deficiencies that were made glaring by the vote.

By Tuesday night, when the results became apparent, the White House was reeling from what one Bush political adviser labeled “a 2-by-4 across the front of the face and head.”

Aides were hastily drawing up a travel schedule that would seek to put the President front-and-center before voters in the next round of primaries in the South, which Bush advisers have long considered more friendly territory.

Buchanan, a former television commentator whose campaign until 10 weeks ago existed only in his mind, had locked in about one-third of the vote before Election Day, according to a host of polls, but he appeared poised to claim 40% or more as the polls closed Tuesday night.

His eyes also on the South, Buchanan was upbeat and predicting success as the day progressed.

As he campaigned on his own behalf outside a polling station early Tuesday, Buchanan advised voters to think about what they have gone through the last few years and to ask themselves “if maybe America doesn’t need new leadership and a new direction for our economy and for the country and for the future.”

Buchanan campaign operatives were downright gleeful as election night progressed, whereas the President’s aides counseled supporters to prepare for the long haul ahead.

“After they dig out of their bunkers tomorrow, I think the first thing the Bush campaign will do is seriously reassess this campaign,” said Paul Erickson, the challenger’s political director.

“If they are to compete at all in the primary season, they must realize they must campaign. We saw virtually no organization here in New Hampshire--I don’t know whether that was because of their own overconfidence or whether or not it was their belief . . . that New Hampshire doesn’t matter to them.”

Bush’s senior campaign adviser, Charles Black, delivered a backhanded compliment to the upstart challenger.

“We always knew this would be a very good state for Pat Buchanan, and it may well be he hit his high-water mark tonight,” Black said.

“A win is a win. Our goal is to finish first in all the primaries and caucuses . . . . If we win all the primaries and caucuses we’ll get the nomination by default.”

Before the polls closed, Bush was optimistic, at least publicly, about his chances with this volatile electorate.

“I feel very confident; I had a good campaign,” the 67-year-old President declared to reporters before a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “We’ve had wonderful support . . . we’ll see how it works.”

Buchanan had kept the incumbent on the defensive since his entry into the race Dec. 10, forcefully portraying Bush as a man who had courted New Hampshire in the 1988 presidential race and then spurned it and the rest of America to take on the foreign-policy prerogatives of the presidency.

The 53-year-old challenger made little attempt to try to compete on the same presidential level as Bush--rather, he urged voters to “send a message” to the President with a thumbs-down vote Tuesday.

Bush too asked voters to send a message--to the Democrat-controlled Congress, which the President asserted was to blame for the national recession.

But Congress was not on Tuesday’s ballot, and Bush by default became the prime focus of voter anger in a state where unemployment is running at nearly 8% and bankruptcies and home foreclosures are epidemic.

Preliminary results from a Los Angeles Times exit poll of New Hampshire voters indicated that they were strongly inclined to punish Bush for the downward trend of the state’s economy. Three of every four Republican voters said the country was on the wrong track, and most of those people cast ballots for Buchanan.

The depth of the voter anger was palpable--half of Buchanan’s voters said that they would probably vote for a Democrat in the fall. Two in 10 Republicans specifically said that they would not vote for Bush in November.

The President had emphasized in recent days his leadership of the country during the Persian Gulf War, but the economy cast a shadow over that message. In effect, the polling showed, that presumed advantage was canceled out by anger over the President’s flip-flop on the issue of taxes.

Tuesday’s returns were all the more painful for Bush given New Hampshire’s prominent role in his 1988 electoral success. Then, the state had responded affirmatively when Bush pleaded for victory as his campaign tried to shake off a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

Bush’s former chief of staff, John H. Sununu, who as governor here in 1988 helped engineer Bush’s victory over Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, blamed the economy for the results Tuesday.

“It has given a hook for a Buchanan campaign,” Sununu told viewers of the state’s largest television station, WMUR, at noon Tuesday.

For Bush, it was the latest turn in a love-hate relationship with the taciturn New Hampshire electorate: Eight years before his 1988 victory here, his initial bid for the presidency foundered under an assault from the ultimate nominee, Ronald Reagan.

For his part, Buchanan was seeking to mount the strongest challenge to an incumbent Republican President here since 1976, when his conservative idol, Reagan, barely lost to then-President Gerald R. Ford.

Beginning at his announcement in Concord, Buchanan waged an aggressive, scrappy campaign, his constant target the wounded psyche of New Hampshire Republicans who felt abandoned by Bush.

Under the rubric “America first,” Buchanan hammered at the foreign-policy priorities of the Bush Administration and contended that as President he would strip foreign aid funding, get tough with trading partners and do battle with Congress to lower taxes on Americans.

Buchanan spent little of his time--until pressed--delineating his own programs, but voters seemed to care more about his potential as a vehicle for embarrassing Bush than for his own possibilities as President.

His commercials bore a striking resemblance to those Bush had used to good effect in 1988 in labeling Kansas Sen. Bob Dole as a taxer-and-spender. For weeks--long enough, Buchanan liked to say, for 3-year-olds to memorize the line--the airwaves here were saturated with commercials citing Bush’s broken “No New Taxes” pledge.

Over the weekend, he began another tough commercial accusing Bush of reneging on his State of the Union pledge to deliver a $500-per-child income tax deduction.

During the course of his campaign, Buchanan traveled the length and breadth of New Hampshire--in marked contrast to Bush--and made a clear connection to voters who were angry at Washington in general and the President in particular.

On a radio call-in show recently, a man spoke, a bit more exuberantly than most, perhaps, of the rage that afflicted many here when they thought of the federal government.

“Burn it down,” the man told Buchanan. “I’ll send you the gasoline.”

While Buchanan was ever-present, the only sighting of Bush throughout most of the campaign was a life-size cardboard cutout of the waving President that filled the window of his Manchester headquarters.

Bush spent only four days here this year, seemingly forgetting the lesson he learned in 1988, when he junked his country-club campaign and sought voters with effusive abandon.

Over the weekend, as Bush campaigned in southern New Hampshire, his tentative standing among New Hampshirites was confirmed--his events were woefully ill-attended and even those who showed up to see the President indicated that they were not sure they would vote for him.

It was then that Bush operatives shifted their take on the election. No longer did they contend that Bush would sweep Buchanan here; instead, they argued that New Hampshire was not an appropriate referendum on the President because of its economic straits.