M. Spencer Green/Associated Press

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama waves to an overflow crowd at a campaign rally in Lebanon, N.H. Monday was the last full day of campaigning for today's New Hampshsire primary. In late polls, Obama had a clear lead over the rest of the Democratic field while McCain held a small lead on the Republican side.

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MANCHESTER, N.H. — John McCain placed his revived Republican presidential campaign on the line against a weakened but determined Mitt Romney as New Hampshire primary voters came out in large numbers today.

Barack Obama declared Americans were ready to "cast aside cynicism" as he looked for a convincing win in the Democratic contest.

Weather was spring-like and participation brisk, although it remained to be seen whether New Hampshire would match the record-busting turnout of the Iowa caucuses won by Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee only five days earlier.

Republicans, their national race for the nomination tangled, watched a New Hampshire contest unfold between McCain and Romney at the top of their field, polls indicating McCain had an edge but no clear-cut advantage.

Supporters mobbed an upbeat McCain at a Nashua polling station, making it hard for him to reach voters as they filed inside.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York promised a daylong blitz to get her supporters out, even as those closest to her acknowledged the difficulty of trying to counter Obama's momentum so soon after the Iowa caucuses.

Obama spoke at Dartmouth College. "Today you can make your voice heard - you can insist that change will come," Obama told the crowd.

"The American people have decided for the first time in a very long time to cast aside cynicism, to cast aside fear, to cast aside doubts."

Looking back at his Iowa victory, the man who would be the first black president said: "The state was not, according to the experts, designed for me. There were not a lot of people who look like me in Iowa."

At Brookside Congregational Church in Manchester, 50 voters lined up before dawn and people waited in their cars for a parking space after doors opened. When Huckabee passed fellow GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani outside, Huckabee jokingly asked the former New York mayor for his vote. "We get along beautifully on the trail," Huckabee said.

Giuliani waved off a question about his decline in polls, pointing to the church and saying, "The only poll I'm interested in is the one that goes on inside there."

That wasn't exactly so. At his New Hampshire headquarters, he asserted that opinion polls in some 15 states find him on top.

The nation's first primary offered Obama a chance to become the clear favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination while McCain and Romney competed head to head in a Republican race that seemed bound to sink the aspirations of one of them.

Rooting from distant sidelines, Obama's Kenyan relatives sat in plastic chairs at the end of a dusty road lined with mango and mimosa trees, listening to the radio. The Democrat's uncle, Said Obama, commented that his nephew "has proved to be a beacon of hope here and shown that even in difficult circumstances you can make it to the highest height of achievement with just determination and hard work."

Kogelo, the western Kenyan home village of Barack Obama's father, has been spared the violence that has erupted elsewhere following a disputed presidential election.

Former President Clinton dampened expectations for his wife, saying the unusually short stretch between Iowa and New Hampshire presented little chance to counter Obama's bounce.

Boisterous supporters chanted John Edwards' name as he left a polling site in Manchester. The former Democratic senator from North Carolina hoped Clinton would be sufficiently weakened today to give him an opening.

He said voters will give Obama a hard look going forward, a point amplified by Elizabeth Edwards. "With all of the sort of gauziness, it's sort of like a first date in a lot of ways with these candidates," she said. "At some point people recognize that `I'm not going on a first date with this fellow, I'm marrying them.' "

Paradoxically, the struggle for primacy in the Democratic and Republican campaigns was, to an outsized degree, in the hands of independents who make up a large share of the voters here and by definition are not loyal to either party.

Clinton and her daughter Chelsea poured coffee for voters and a police officer at a Manchester elementary school before dawn. They were greeted by a dozen voters and twice as many supporters outside. "We're going to work all day to get the vote out," she said.

Her next stop was at a polling place in a Nashua high school, where pupils who had just arrived by bus screamed with excitement and enveloped her. She worked her way to a group of 50 supporters, some hugging her as she moved down the line greeting them.

At a school in a working class Manchester neighborhood, Anna and Adam Helbling looked beyond the passions of the moment to the Democrat they think could win in the fall, and voted for Obama. "I really wanted to vote for Hillary, but I think Obama has a really good chance against a Republican rival," Anna said.

Kathy Nadeau, 49, a property manager, backed Clinton because of her experience. "Hillary has done a good job in Washington," she said, "and I think she can bail us out."

The high number of independents presented an opportunity for McCain, a GOP iconoclast who won New Hampshire against establishment pick George W. Bush in 2000, and for Obama, pressing hard to build a constituency broader than his party. But it also was a complication because they were dipping into the same nonaligned pool.

Even so, polls indicated Obama had pulled ahead of Clinton as she fought to write a "comeback kid" story to rival that of her husband in 1992.

McCain held a statistically insignificant lead over Romney in late polls. Obama had a clear advantage over Clinton in surveys and Edwards trailed both, with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in the rear.