GOP presidential candidates wasted no time flocking to New Hampshire after last week's Iowa caucuses, with Mitt Romney leading in the polls and his rivals making frantic attempts to shift the tide and chip away at his advantage.

Hordes of reporters also descended on the Granite State, traveling with the candidates to campaign events and contributing to the mob atmosphere at polling places.

In the end however, Romney emerged the clear victor while still managing to leave lingering uncertainty about how strong of a frontrunner he is. And so the GOP candidates, all of whom said on Tuesday night that they would remain in the race, will continue their mad dash in 11 days, when voters in South Carolina get their chance to help pick the GOP's general election contender in an open primary.

Who came out a winner and who came out a loser in the New Hampshire primary? Click through the slideshow below and vote.

AP - Dealt a disappointing loss, Republican Rick Santorum pledged "we are going to go on to South Carolina," where he hoped to establish himself as the conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney.

Tom Curry, MSNBC
Assuming that Mitt Romney scores a solid victory in today’s New Hampshire primary, how is the struggle for the Republican nomination likely to play out? Is it likely that Romney will march through South Carolina’s Jan. 21 primary and then Florida’s ten days later and clinch the nomination? Or will a costly war of attrition grind on for months?The defining feature of the GOP race remains as it was at the outset last spring: Romney, the favorite of many party regulars, elected officials, members of Congress, and business leaders, is distrusted by many conservatives...

As they left polling places Tuesday afternoon, many voters revealed they'd made up their minds in the last days of the race.

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Quin Hillyer, Freedom Line
Just by way of analysis, not meaning to be pro- or anti-Romney’s candidacy — but can anybody give me even a halfway convincing explanation for why the commentariat thinks that Mitt Romney is so much more electable than some of the other GOP candidates? (And no, polls don’t count: Polls aren’t actual analysis, and head-to-head polls for next fall mean absolutely nothing at this stage of a race other than a rough sense of name ID. If they did, Jimmy Carter would have beaten Ronald Reagan by 32 points.) 

Reuters - U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has sailed farther ahead of rival Republican candidates nationally and narrowed President Barack Obama's lead in the White House race, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday.

ContributorNetwork - COMMENTARY | Slowly but surely, the votes are trickling in for the New Hampshire GOP primary. Today's vote is often the make or break for any remaining candidates in the field. Some are going to fall by the wayside and bow out of the race by Wednesday morning. Others if they have a respectable showing are going to keep plugging along to South Carolina. One of those people that has an almost certainty to go the distance is Mitt Romney.

While national pollsters focus on the presidential horse race, we’re conducting another – highly unscientific – poll of our readers.

Congress is back in session next week.

Last week President Obama announced a plan to cut defense spending

Congress is in the final stages of finalizing an extension to the 2011 payroll tax cut.

Roger Simon, Politico
So it has come to this: Seven days since it began, it is essentially over.Just a week since the Iowa caucuses, the first contest of a long primary season, it is widely assumed that Mitt Romney will be the nominee of the Republican Party.Forget about delegates. Iowa, which Romney won by eight votes, gave him no delegates. It was a pure beauty contest.

Sahil Kapur, TPM
Before she dropped out of the GOP presidential race, Michele Bachmann waxed apocalyptic about how 2012 is the Republican Party’s only chance to repeal the health reform law. “We cannot afford to have a candidate who fails to understand the complexity of Obamacare or the urgency of its repeal,” the Minnesota congresswoman said in an often-repeated line. “Because, we have only have one chance for repeal, and that’s 2012.”

Heading into the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary, Mitt Romney is ahead in the polls. But there's a race among Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, as they try to attract conservative voters in the state.

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In Hart's Location, New Hampshire, voters cast ballots in the state's primary election just after midnight on Tuesday.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received 5 votes, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) received 4, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman received 2, while Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich each secured one vote.

The results came in shortly after 9 registered voters in the town of Dixville Notch cast the first ballots in New Hampshire's primary contest.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman each won two votes of the nine cast in the contest. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) each received one vote. Three Democratic ballots were cast for President Barack Obama.

HuffPost's Mark Blumenthal reports on the latest polls out on the race for the Republican presidential nomination in New Hampshire:

Four new polls released over the weekend continue to show Mitt Romney heading for a comfortable victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, with some uncertainty remaining about the ultimate size of that margin and the race for second through fifth place. All four polls show increasing support for former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, with some suggesting that Huntsman might close in on Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) for second place.

The four new surveys differed in their methods and timing, and perhaps as a result, showed slightly varying levels of support for former Massachusetts Gov. Romney. The polls -- conducted by the University of New Hampshire and WMUR; Suffolk University and 7News; the Democratic Party-affiliated firm Public Policy Polling and the American Research Group -- estimated Romney's support between 35 and 41 percent of the likely primary voter. They also gave him leads over his nearest competitors ranging from 15 to 24 percentage points.

The two polls that tracked opinions over the course of the week showed slight declines for Romney. Romney was down two and five points respectively on the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk University surveys, compared to surveys conducted earlier in the week.

WASHINGTON -- On the eve of the crucial New Hampshire primary, President Barack Obama told supporters Monday that the Republicans vying for his job out on the campaign trail are no different from the ones opposing his policies on Capitol Hill.

Speaking at an evening fundraiser at a Washington hotel, Obama several times dismissed "the Republicans in Congress and the candidates who are running for president," saying both groups were trying to eliminate needed environmental protections, roll back the minimum wage, dismantle Medicare and gut spending on education, research and infrastructure.

"Republicans in Congress and these candidates, they think that the best way for America to compete for new jobs and businesses is to follow other countries in a race to the bottom," Obama said. "We can't go back to this brand of you're-on-your-own economics."

The president didn't mention any of the Republicans by name, and made only a couple of passing references to New Hampshire. But it was his most explicit effort yet to link the GOP presidential field with the unpopular Republicans in Congress – a strategy the White House has been signaling it would employ.

Obama also sought to recapture some of the energy of his 2008 campaign, telling about 700 supporters at the Capitol Hilton that their work was far from finished in 2012.

"The very core of what this country stands for is on the line," he said, adding, in another swipe at the GOP field: "Don't take my word for it. Watch some of these debates that have been going on up in New Hampshire."

Obama didn't talk about Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, but did tell supporters at one point that a sense of common purpose still exists in the country – even if "maybe it doesn't exist here in Washington and maybe not on the presidential debate stage of New Hampshire, but out in America, it's there."

Supporters paid $100 per ticket to see Obama speak at the reception as the president got back on the fundraising trail for the first time in 2012, something he'll be doing with increasing frequency through the November election.

At an earlier event Monday at the swanky Jefferson Hotel, Obama joined around 25 guests for a closed-press round table discussion with tickets $45,000 each and proceeds split between his campaign and the Swing State Victory Fund, which supports Democrats in battleground states.

Residents in the small town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire were the first to cast ballots in the state's presidential primary election just after midnight on Tuesday.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman each won 2 votes of the 9 cast in the contest. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) each received 1 vote. Three Democratic ballots were cast for President Barack Obama.

According to the Associated Press, the group of 9 registered voters in Dixville Notch comprised three Republicans, two Democrats and four undeclared voters.

Dixville Notch has voted first in the state's primary election since 1960. Town clerk Rick Erwin told Granite State-based station WMUR ahead of the contest, "It's great that they respect the tradition."

Voters in Hart's Location also cast ballots in the contest shortly after midnight. Here's a rundown of the results:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received 5 votes, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) received 4, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman received 2, while Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich each secured one vote.

HuffPost's Mark Blumenthal reports on the latest polls out on the race for the Republican presidential nomination in New Hampshire:

Four new polls released over the weekend continue to show Mitt Romney heading for a comfortable victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, with some uncertainty remaining about the ultimate size of that margin and the race for second through fifth place. All four polls show increasing support for former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, with some suggesting that Huntsman might close in on Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) for second place.

The four new surveys differed in their methods and timing, and perhaps as a result, showed slightly varying levels of support for former Massachusetts Gov. Romney. The polls -- conducted by the University of New Hampshire and WMUR; Suffolk University and 7News; the Democratic Party-affiliated firm Public Policy Polling and the American Research Group -- estimated Romney's support between 35 and 41 percent of the likely primary voter. They also gave him leads over his nearest competitors ranging from 15 to 24 percentage points.

The two polls that tracked opinions over the course of the week showed slight declines for Romney. Romney was down two and five points respectively on the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk University surveys, compared to surveys conducted earlier in the week.

At the 757th Republican debate over the weekend, Newt Gingrich zinged Mitt Romney for attempting to portray his decision to forego a reelection race in Massachusetts as reluctance to become a lifetime politician. “Can we drop a bit of the pious baloney?” Gingrich taunted, observing that Romney’s poll numbers were dropping in 2006, and that he was eyeing a presidential run (which he did indeed make in 2008).

True enough. Romney’s explanation was transparently self-serving and contrived. That said, Romney cannot hope to compete in the phoniness league Newt Gingrich belongs to. At that level of play, candidates dare to suggest that they take huge retainers from Freddie Mac in order to offer advice “as a historian,” and commit serial adultery because “partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country . . . I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

Keep reading this post . . .

WASHINGTON -- If ever there were a time when polls should be certain about something, it is that Mitt Romney will win New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. At least 53 times over the past two years, and at least 24 times in the last two months, media pollsters have measured the preferences of likely voters in New Hampshire, and found Romney leading the Republican race every time, usually by large, double-digit margins.

The final round of tracking polls taken over the past weekend shows Romney leading Ron Paul and the rest of the candidates by margins of 15 to 24 percentage points. By the metrics of polling, Romney's victory in New Hampshire appears virtually assured.

Yet the same surveys are also full of uncertainty, particularly as reported by the voters themselves, and that margin of doubt leaves open questions about the size of Romney's likely victory and the identity of the candidates who finish second, third and fourth.

Consider these results, all measured over the campaign's final weekend:

• The WMUR/University of New Hampshire (UNH) poll finds that less than half the likely voters (44 percent) say they have "definitely decided" who they will vote for, 27 percent are "leaning to someone" and 29 percent are "still trying to decide."

• Nearly a third of the voters on the News7/Suffolk University tracking poll conducted Saturday and Sunday nights are either completely undecided (12 percent) or say it is very likely (2 percent) or somewhat likely (20 percent) that they might change their minds.

• The Public Policy Polling (PPP) automated survey finds more than a quarter of the likely voters are either totally undecided (4 percent) or say they might end up supporting someone other than their first choice (23 percent).

Self-reported uncertainty alone does not foretell polling surprises, though it may be an important warning sign. The final UNH tracking poll before the 2008 primary found almost exactly the same level of uncertainty as this year among the Republicans and slightly less among the Democrats. Yet multi-poll averages of the final polls on the Republican race came very close to correctly predicting John McCain's six percentage point margin over Mitt Romney, while the final polls on the Democratic race understated Hillary Clinton's support by 8 to 10 points, leading to one of the most infamous polling snafus in recent memory.

In addition to voter reports of uncertainty, the polls are also producing somewhat contradictory stories about late trends. The 7News/Suffolk University tracking poll shows Romney's support dropping 10 percentage points in a week to just 33 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, the University of New Hampshire poll shows a five percentage point drop over the same period with Romney's support at 41 percent. The final polls by other organizations that have not tracked as often peg Romney's support somewhere in between.

Polls are also projecting different levels of support for Jon Huntsman. The Suffolk and UNH surveys, for example, show Huntsman running a clear third, with 11 and 13 percent of the vote respectively. Meanwhile, the final surveys from PPP and the American Research Group give Huntsman 16 and 18 percentage points respectively, enough to be in a virtual tie for second with Ron Paul.

Do polling methods explain these discrepancies? The polls cited here are certainly not created equal. PPP samples from voter lists and uses an automated, recorded-voice methodology. The other surveys use live interviewers and sample telephone numbers generated by a random digit method in order to ensure representation of listed and unlisted landline numbers. Based on the information provided in the survey reports, the Suffolk University poll appears to be the only one of the final weekend polls that dialed a separate sample of mobile telephones (drawn from a commercial list of working cell phone numbers).

But the connection between the varying methodologies and the differences in the survey results is far from obvious. The more important point may be simply that the apparent "house effects" are a symptom of the underlying voter uncertainty. Some voters are having a hard time making up their minds, so subtle variations in how pollsters ask their questions, how hard they push undecided voters for a choice and how they define the likely electorate may be producing different results.

The director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center told The Huffington Post that he considers most of the polls are "pretty much within the same ballpark," showing the same rough order of finish and projecting results for each candidate "with the error rate."

If that proves to be the case, then an average across all polls should produce the clearest picture of the outcome. The chart below, featuring the HuffPost Pollster trend lines based on all public polls in New Hampshire, does just that. As of this writing it shows Romney's support declining slightly (to 36.8 percent) followed by Ron Paul (at 17.6 percent), with Huntsman just a point and a half behind (at 16.0 percent) and rising fast, followed by Rick Santorum (11.6 percent), Newt Gingrich (10.0 percent) and Rick Perry (0.9 percent). Huntsman's momentum in on a track to catch Paul, though who will finish on top is one of those things about which polling simply cannot be certain.

Note: The News7 and Suffolk University continued to poll on Monday night and planned to release a final sample of interviews on Tuesday morning. We will update this post when those results are available.

Simon Johnson, Bloomberg
The biggest news for the Republican presidential-nomination race last week wasn't the outcome of the Iowa caucuses but the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Unless you think Rick Santorum can scale up in record time to run a national campaign, the Iowa results just confirmed what we already knew: Mitt Romney is likely to face President Barack Obama in November.  

Since the beginning of the Republican primary process, the defining feature of the contest has been Mitt Romney, pollster Scott Rasmussen tells National Review Online. Other candidates have risen and fallen, but the former Massachusetts governor has stayed steady around 25 percent in the polls. As Rasmussen recounts the trajectory of the race, it becomes clear how furious the search for the anti-Mitt has been: “Early on, people were talking about Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee; then they turned to Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie.” Then, of course, Republicans settled for the candidates who were actually running.

The latest alternative, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, offers the same strength and the same weakness as those who came before him, Rasmussen argues. His strength? The broad swath of Republicans who yearn for a candidate other than Romney. His weakness? His untested ability to perform in the spotlight. For Santorum to succeed, he’ll need to satisfy two conditions: First, he’ll have to convince voters he can beat President Obama. Second, he’ll have to convince them he can bring change to the White House. The reason Romney has failed to close the deal so far, Rasmussen contends, is that, though Republicans believe he satisfies the first condition, “some aren’t so sure about the second part.” “People want to shake up the political class in Washington,” Rasmussen says. “Some think Mitt is just part of it and wants to run it better.”

Keep reading this post . . .

Ron Fournier, National Journal
The only five men standing between Mitt Romney and the Republican presidential nomination took a walk Saturday night -- attacking each other and the media as the former Massachusetts governor coasted toward the brass ring. Romney came to the debate threatening to run away with the race, and left the stage just as strong. Maybe stronger. He faced surprisingly little criticism from his flailing rivals, and answered their punches with sharp jabs.

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Debate moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to explain his controversial newsletters written under his name in the 1990s, which included offensive statements and stereotypes about African Americans.

Paul responded by pointing to his admiration for African American civil rights leaders, saying they had libertarian tendencies.

"More importantly, you ought to ask me what my relationship is for racial relationships," said Paul. "And one of my heroes is Marin Luther King because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience, as did Rosa Parks."

He then discussed what he views as the "true racism" in America:

I'm the only one up here and the only one in the Democratic Party that understands true racism in this country. It's in the judicial system. And it has to do with enforcing the drug laws. The percentage of people who use drugs are about the same with blacks and whites, and yet the blacks are arrested way disproportionately. They're prosecuted, imprisoned, way disproportionately. They get the death penalty way disproportionately.

How many times have you seen a white rich person get the electric chair or get execution? But poor minorities have an injustice. And they have an injustice in war as well. Because minorities suffer more. Even with the draft, they suffered definitely more. Without a draft, they're suffering disproportionately. If we truly want to be concerned about racism, you ought to look at a few of those issues and look at the drug laws which are being so unfairly enforced.

Ryan Grim has more here on the drug war and race.

With New Hampshire's primary election just days away, candidates competing for the Republican presidential nomination are facing off in the Granite State on Saturday night.

The debate comes less than a week after the 2012 Iowa caucus and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann dropping out of the race.

The following presidential hopefuls are taking part in the event: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

The same group of six will go head-to-head in another primary debate on Sunday morning.

Below, a live blog of the latest developments to unfold.

AP - Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and the rest of Mitt Romney's pursuers still have time to stop his rise in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. But not much. And not all of them.

Republican candidates are battling in New Hampshire this weekend, ahead of Tuesday's make-or-break primary. With six main candidates still in the race, a main point of contention among them is: Who's the REAL conservative?

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CONCORD, N.H. -- Rick Kaplan, producer for Saturday's ABC News/Yahoo/WMUR debate, says he doesn't "remember a debate that has as much on the line as this one."

That's quite a statement coming from Kaplan, a network veteran and former cable news president who has worked on presidential debates since 1972. But Kaplan insists that the seven Republican candidates taking the stage at 9 p.m. all have something to prove.

"There's no candidate who can skate in this one," Kaplan said. "You fight this night or you don't have another night."

"This is it," he continued. "This is do or die."

Primetime Republican debates, of which this is the 14th, have had an outsized influence on the race, with on-stage battles leading to countless tweets, blog posts and stories in a hyper-charged political news cycle. Texas Gov. Rick Perry's stumbles helped drag down strong poll numbers out of the gate; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who thrives on verbal sparring, revived a moribund campaign with debate performances in front of millions around the country.

Despite more than a dozen previous debates -- and Sunday morning's NBC/Facebook debate on the way -- Saturday night's debate is unique in that it will be the only prime-time face-off during the crucial week before between the Iowa Caucus squeaker and Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.

"Votes have been cast. A candidate has dropped out," Kaplan said. "We're starting to see the field really take shape in terms of how it lines up here in New Hampshire and South Carolina."

Losing by just eight votes, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has now moved to the top tier of the Republican field and, for the first time, will appear in the middle of the stage next to long-time frontrunner Mitt Romney. So Santorum, the least covered candidate of 2011, will kick off the first debate of 2012 in a prime spot rather than off to the side. "This is Santorum's first chance in the limelight," Kaplan said.

The candidates, lining up from left to right, will be former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Perry. ABC's Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos will moderate the debate, joined by Manchester WMUR-TV anchor Josh McElveen. Kaplan said that jobs and the economy should get a significant amount of attention in the general-themed debate, along with social issues. It will air nationally on ABC, locally on WMUR, and will stream on Yahoo.

ABC scored the top-rated debate of 2011 with Stephanopoulos and Sawyer at the helm, drawing more than 7.6 million viewers. ABC can be expected to pull in political junkies and, perhaps, many viewers now just tuning into the race post-Iowa. But the network faces one hurdle in topping the December ratings: an 8 p.m. playoff game between the Detroit Lions and New Orleans Saints. ABC executives are probably hoping for a blowout.

RELATED: December's ABC/Yahoo Debate: