With the Obama juggernaut stalling in New Hampshire, we are in for an Obama-Clinton battle to the end.

All of the signs pointed to Barack Obama’s building on his Iowa win with a sizeable New Hampshire victory. Obama appeals chiefly to independents, first-time voters, the college-educated, and the young—and on all of these fronts, New Hampshire was much more fertile ground than Iowa. 

The calendar also favored Obama. Traditionally, there has been more than a week between the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. But with this year’s compressed calendar, Clinton had to come back only five days after Obama had stunned her in Iowa. 

An Obama win in Iowa followed by another win in New Hampshire would have been nearly fatal for Clinton. No candidate on either the Republican or Democratic side has ever finished first in Iowa and New Hampshire and gone on to lose the nomination (the asterisk here is Edmund Muskie, who in 1972 won in New Hampshire and won more delegates than the other candidates in Iowa, but finished just a hair behind “uncommitted.” Muskie then lost the nomination to George McGovern).

A second crucial loss in a row, especially by the nearly double-digit margin that a number of late New Hampshire polls showed, and it would have been hard to see which future states (if any) Clinton could have won.

But, just like her husband did in 1992, Hillary Clinton came back in New Hampshire. How did she do it? Clinton won because there are a lot of Democratic primary voters who are not young, highly educated independents (the bulwark of Obama’s support). In New Hampshire, she ran much stronger than Obama did among the less educated, blue-collar Democrats. Perhaps the profile of the Clinton voter is less sexy than that of the Obama voter—but in New Hampshire, there were more of them.

According to exit polls, Obama did win among registered independents by 41 percent to Clinton’s 34 percent. But Clinton won registered Democrats by an even wider margin, 45 percent to 33 percent. Obama narrowly won the college educated, but Clinton won big among those without a college education. Clinton and Obama virtually tied among voters between the ages of 18 and 64, but Clinton won the 65-and-over crowd by 15 percentage points.

Hillary Clinton came back in New Hampshire because the state has a lot of Democratic primary voters who are not young, highly educated independents—the bulwark of Obama’s support.

Obama’s loss arguably had something to do with the late rise of Republican John McCain and his appeal to independents. Many pundits had speculated that Obama would take votes from McCain because he would attract independents to vote for him in the Democratic primary. It is true that independents did vote in greater numbers in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary—the split was about 60 percent to 40 percent—but some pre-New Hampshire polls showed as many as two-thirds of independents looking to pull the Democratic lever. If you remove McCain from the picture, Obama still might not have had enough independent support to win—but, in all likelihood, he would have nearly tied Clinton. The McCain factor cannot wholly explain the huge difference between the pre-primary polls and the final result.

Going forward, Clinton will have the advantage in states that do not allow independents to vote in the Democratic primary. Obama will do well among yuppie voters and excel in states where there are more highly educated and independent voters. If Obama’s appeal were only to this thin slice of voters, Clinton would beat him soundly. But after lily-white Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama will be able to supplement his support from yuppie political newbies with African-American voters, who in some states make up nearly 50 percent of the Democratic primary electorate. Even when faced with Clinton’s strong appeal to black voters, who supported her husband enthusiastically, Obama will win the black vote and also drive up African-American turnout.

As for John Edwards, the New Hampshire result makes it almost impossible for him to win the nomination. His hope was for a Hillary collapse. It didn’t happen. Now his prospects for finishing higher than third in upcoming states is very low.

While the race probably won’t change much before “Super Tuesday” on February 5th, South Carolina primary will be of interest. Obama will not see as many yuppie Democrats in South Carolina as in other places, but he stands to benefit from the Palmetto State’s large African-American vote. Clinton, on the other hand, will benefit from the closed primary system that allows only Democrats to cast ballots, and she will get solid support from lower-income and middle-class whites. But no matter what the outcome in South Carolina, the split result in the first two states guarantees we will have no prohibitive favorite going into Super Tuesday.

For that matter, Super Tuesday includes such a diverse batch of states that both candidates are likely to do well. There will be primaries in their two homes states, Illinois and New York, as well as in California, which has a highly educated, independent minded electorate but relatively few African Americans and a big Hispanic population. (The Latino vote was not a factor in either Iowa or New Hampshire.) The demographics of other Super Tuesday states vary wildly. Some states also have different primary rules. So there is a good chance that we will have a competitive contest well beyond Super Tuesday, and perhaps even through early March. There will be no early end to this one.

John C. Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.