NASHUA, N.H. — The deluge of support for John McCain started early yesterday at the sun-splashed Broad Street Elementary School polling station, where voters who chose Republican ballots wanted to give the 71-year-old Arizona senator another shot at the White House.

Independent voter Paul Connerty, 68, marched through a gauntlet of political signs jammed into melting snowbanks, TV satellite trucks and campaign workers trying to ply him with political stickers, to cast his vote for the former Navy flier who won the New Hampshire primary in 2000. Connerty, an Air Force veteran, wants “change” in Washington, he said, repeating a refrain echoed by voters throughout the day. He was impressed that McCain scored the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president eight years ago, which Connerty sees as an example of McCain’s ability to reach across party divides.

Mark and Victoria Cookson, husband and wife and registered Republicans, came together to the polls in Nashua, not knowing how the other would vote.

Both backed McCain.

“Foreign policy was the big area for me, especially with the news coming out of Pakistan, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and the [naval] encounter with Iran,” said Mark Cookson. “McCain is the most qualified and has the most integrity to lead.”

Victoria Cookson took her time making up her mind. She heard four candidates in person: McCain, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and Democrats John Edwards and Sen. Hillary Clinton. She came away most impressed with McCain. “I think he is the most well-rounded,” she said.

Among Democrats, the contest tightened into a nail-biting struggle between Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. By night’s end, Clinton claimed victory with 39 percent of the vote.

Clinton won support from loyal Democrats, especially elderly women. Eleanor Morrison, 85, cast her first vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yesterday, the 85-year-old retiree supported Clinton, saying, “I think she is qualified and I think she deserves a chance.”

Independent Mike Jacobs, 45, a small businessman who runs a swimming pool company, agonized between the two candidates he thought were most likely to bring change: Obama and former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, the winner of the GOP’s Iowa caucus.

He chose Obama.

“Everyone is looking for a change from the same-old, same-old,” Jacobs said. “It seems that a lot of people are getting behind Barack.” He liked Huckabee’s plan to replace the income tax with a national sales tax and eliminate the IRS. “But Barack seems like he can cross the lines and bring the parties together.”

Every four years this chilly state that contains four-tenths of 1 percent of the nation’s population holds the nation’s leadoff presidential primary and has an outsized say in who becomes the leader of the most powerful nation in the world.

After last week’s record Iowa caucus turnout and yesterday’s big New Hampshire vote, there is one trend with which both political professionals and rank-and-file voters will agree: The 2008 election is being taken very seriously by an electorate weary of the Iraq war, a slowing economy and the status quo in Washington.

On the Republican side, voters interviewed yesterday said they wanted to turn the page on the Bush administration; few offered affectionate views of the president.

Those who supported Romney or Huckabee said they wanted someone from outside Washington to take over the White House, while voters backing McCain cited his honesty and willingness to buck his party and the Washington establishment.

Music teacher Kevin Fadel, of Derry, said he is an independent who agonized over whether to support Obama or Romney. He settled on the former Massachusetts governor. “There is a whole middle part of America that is sick of the partisanship and the games in Washington. We have a paralysis of partisanship.

“We are at the point where we really don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican. If you do not want to work together, this country will continue to go down,” said Fadel. “I like that Romney was a governor and was not part of Washington.”

Obama voters, too, said they sought an end to bickering, and believed that the Illinois senator would rise above it. “I think Senator Obama has been in Washington long enough so that he has figured out what is wrong, is intelligent enough to know how to fix it, but hasn’t been there long enough to become a member of the old boys’ club,” said Gereald Jussaume, of Nashua, a culinary arts teacher.

“New Hampshire voters take this seriously,” says Andrew Smith, a University of New Hampshire political science professor and pollster. “They are familiar with the issues and the candidates; many see the candidates personally.”

A 2004 exit poll done by Smith at UNH showed that about 20 percent of New Hampshire voters personally met or attended a campaign event where a candidate appeared, an astonishingly high number for a democracy with a population of 300 million in the 21st century.

New Hampshire is important because it is the first time real voters in a real election deliver their verdict on the 2008 presidential field. Last’s week’s Iowa caucuses had a record turnout, but even then only about 12 percent of the state’s eligible voters cast ballots.

Yesterday’s New Hampshire turnout was huge. On a sunny day with a taste of spring in the air, some voters wore shorts and T-shirts in 63-degree weather. Democrats were buoyed by reports that many more independents — who can vote in either primary — chose to vote in the Democratic primary than in the Republican contest. The Democratic turnout set a record in the state.

“This is really great for the Democratic Party,” said Ray Buckley, the state Democratic chairman. “Come November this ought to help us.”

New Hampshire a generation ago was New England’s most reliably Republican state. Democrat John Kerry defeated President Bush here in 2004, but it was the 2006 election that revealed a transformed New Hampshire. New voters and a Democratic campaign fueled by distaste for Mr. Bush and the Iraq War led to an historic Republican rout. The state’s two Republican congressmen lost, Gov. John Lynch, a popular Democrat, won an easy reelection and the state legislature turned Democratic for the first time since 1874.

Holding the first presidential primary means that campaigns come here to either fall by the wayside or move to the next round of the playoff-like system Americans use to choose presidential nominees. The state has a long history of making or breaking campaigns. In 1968, New Hampshire Democratic voters gave the anti-Vietnam War candidacy of Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy 42 percent of the vote in his campaign against then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who received 49 percent. A humiliated Johnson dropped out 19 days later. That same year, the state’s Republicans resurrected Richard M. Nixon; he won the White House.

Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie in 1972 became the only presidential candidate to win both Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire’s primary, but then failed to win his party’s nomination. That year, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern mounted another antiwar campaign and exceeded expectations in New Hampshire, giving his campaign oxygen. Jimmy Carter came out of oblivion in 1976 by promising Watergate-weary voters that he would never lie to them. Carter’s 1980 New Hampshire victory over Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy extinguished Kennedy’s presidential ambitions.

Ronald Reagan used the state’s primary in 1980 to defeat George H.W. Bush en route to the White House. Bush became Reagan’s vice president and in 1988 New Hampshire voters gave Bush the momentum he needed to defeat Bob Dole.

In 2004, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry used the votes of his New Hampshire neighbors to solidify his Iowa caucus victory and pave the road to his nomination.

Choosing between Obama and Clinton was a tough decision for independent Don Peters, 64, a retired software engineer. He chose Clinton. “It was a close call,” he said. “I figured she had a little more experience; it was so close. I like him and I love the way he speaks.”

Steve Bouley, 36, a contractor, is a registered Republican. He was torn between McCain and Romney. He watched all the candidate debates and read up on their positions, especially on illegal immigration, which is an important issue for Bouley. He chose Romney, because “I could not agree with McCain’s past policies on illegal immigration,” he said.

Many Democratic voters interviewed in southern New Hampshire yesterday — particularly the elderly — said they voted for Clinton because they had great affection for her husband. “He was a good president and she has him behind her,” said Mary McGinty, after voting at the community center in Hudson.

smackay@projo.com