Opinion: Breaking News: McCain, Obama ahead so far in N.H.

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Well, it’s still just a little early, but the first votes are in for the New Hampshire presidential primary --all 17 of them -- and so far John McCain and Barack Obama have surged to the front.

Turnout in Dixville Notch, a tiny hamlet in northern New Hampshire that might as well be in Canada, was 100% this year. Everybody had their own voting booth, except four people sent in absentee ballots.

Registration there is two Democrats, three Republicans and 12 independents.

McCain captured four votes, Mitt Romney got two and Rudy Giuliani got but one. Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson got skunked as did, Ron Paul, despite his appearance on Jay Leno Monday night.

On the Democratic side, Obama won a landslide seven votes, John Edwards won two, Bill Richardson got one and Hillary Clinton, the recent national front-runner, got none, along with Dennis Kucinich.

Eighty-five percent of the time in the past 56 years, the new president is a winner of the New Hampshire primary (Paul Tsongas in 92 and McCain in 00 are the exceptions). Judging from tonight’s vote totals and the historical pattern in Dixville Notch, no one should read anything at all into the numbers.

But it is fun.

--Andrew Malcolm