New Hampshire Rocks for Romney!

Congratulations to Mitt Romney on what appears to be an excellent win in New Hampshire today.  The first non-incumbent Republican to ever win in both Iowa and New Hampshire.  That's impressive.

And from what I've seen so far of exit polls, there is little but good news for Romney.  A few points:

- There was a question as to who the voters who were still undecided in up to the voting time would go for.  Romney got more of these voters than any of the other candidates.  That's despite all the other candidates constantly attacking Mitt all week long.

- Romney did best among all major groups: "moderate" "somewhat conservative" and "very conservative."  The ability to appeal to conservatives as well as moderates and independents is critical to being able to beat Obama in November.

- Romney not only appears likely to get somewhere in the upper 30s to low 40s percentage of the total vote in a divided field with still a high number of candidates, but a majority of the voters say they would feel satisfied with him as the nominee.  For the other candidates, majorities say they would not feel satisfied with the other candidates as the nominee.

- Some really bad news for Jon Huntsman: of those that voted for him, more than half would vote for Obama over him if he were the nominee.  That suggests he was pulling in more liberal independents to vote for him - hardly a likely path to success in a Republican race.

Rich Lowry of the National Review talks more about how broad this victory was for Mitt; worth the read.

Gingrich, unfortunately, continues to embarrass himself with his conduct.  It's too bad, because we need him to help with the effort to help unseat Obama in the fall, and he risks compromising his ability to do so if he keeps this up.

More to come as we get the final results...