Kerry in front, race goes national

"It's not done," says independent pollster John Zogby. "Generally you would say, anybody who puts together two impressive victories in Iowa and New Hampshire ought to sail through," and if Kerry wins the majority of contests next week, that may happen. Although Kerry''s "the real front-runner, he's not going into friendly turf."

Certainly, Kerry is moving quickly to make up ground in the Feb. 3 states - South Carolina, Missouri, Arizona, Delaware, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and New Mexico - and to capitalize on his expected bounce coming out of New Hampshire. His campaign went up with ads in all seven states on Jan. 28, and Kerry has said he'll campaign in person in all seven as well.

"We are going to compete everywhere," says Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan. "We're not conceding any state to any one of our opponents." He notes that Kerry will spend time this week in South Carolina - where Sen. John Edwards and retired Gen. Wesley Clark have campaigned steadily. By contrast, Kerry's rivals are likely to take more targeted approaches, in an effort to make efficient use of war chests and come up with some wins to slow Kerry's momentum.

Senator Edwards, who finished fourth, slightly behind General Clark, will focus on South Carolina, a state he has said he must win, though he'll also spend some time in Oklahoma and Missouri, among other states.

Clark plans to travel to Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arizona, and New Mexico. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who finished fifth in New Hampshire, is hoping to win Delaware, and is targeting Oklahoma as well. Dean's travel was not yet set, though he headed first to Vermont. But his campaign indicated he'd visit Arizona and New Mexico - as well as several states with primaries after Feb. 3, such as Michigan and Wisconsin. Dean's campaign says he's raised $1.5 million in the past week alone, and will have the resources to continue for some time.

While Dean's second-place finish was clearly a disappointment, aides note that it did represent something of a turnaround, given the freefall he had found himself in coming out of his third-place Iowa showing and his infamously exuberant concession speech.

"This isn't the finish that we'd like - we worked very hard and wanted to win New Hampshire - but we feel very proud of our showing," says Dorie Clark, Dean's New Hampshire spokeswoman. "We had a bit of a deficit coming down after Iowa, and we were able to make up some of that ground."

But Dean has been hurt by a growing perception that he is "unelectable." According to exit polls in New Hampshire, 4 in 10 voters said Dean does not have a presidential temperament - and of those, 54 percent voted for Kerry. Of the 1 in 5 voters who cited an ability to defeat Bush as the most important quality, Kerry won 62 percent of votes.

Half of all voters said they were "angry" at the Bush administration, but significantly, they were as likely to back Kerry as Dean. Among the more than 4 in 10 primary voters who strongly disapproved of the war in Iraq, Kerry also won roughly the same number of votes as Dean.

• Staff writer Alexandra Marks contributed to this report.

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