"People are going to decide between a candidate who is not the candidate of money, not the candidate of the status quo, but somebody who will actually fight for the changes we need, and it will be between Senator Obama and myself," he said.

On the Republican side, Huckabee enters New Hampshire with little money and little time to mount an adequate come-from-behind surge. And tradition pulls against him. George H. W. Bush in 1980, Bob Dole in 1988 and 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000 — all are Iowa caucus winners who lost their New Hampshire primaries.

Huckabee's Iowa victory served to keep the GOP contest wide open. He won by 9 percentage points and Romney now faces a reinvigorated McCain. Fred Thompson was looking beyond New Hampshire to South Carolina. And Rudy Giuliani, fading in New Hampshire, was counting on Florida and big state contests on Feb. 5.

In Iowa, Thompson held on to a third-place finish over by McCain by fewer than 300 votes, with 96 percent of GOP precincts reporting. McCain spent little time or money there, investing his early hopes in New Hampshire.

An unpredictable factor in New Hampshire could be Republican Ron Paul, an anti-war congressman with libertarian views whose legions of volunteers have fanned out across New Hampshire waving placards and knocking on doors in support of their dark horse candidate. Paul has raised a surprising amount of money, further complicating the political calculations in the state.

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Associated Press writers Beth Fouhy, Philip Elliott, Holly Ramer, Glen Johnson and Charles Babington in New Hampshire and Amy Lorentzen in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.