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     Good morning and welcome to the United States of Obama. For about the last week of the campaign, if not longer, it was beginning to seem like Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama created a gap that Republican candidate John McCain couldn't bridge. But was the election victory really as easy as the 349-163 Electoral College tally made it seem?

     The key to a win on Election Night was said to be the "swing states," or states with majorities of voters that had yet to support one party over the other. Those states included Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado – all eventually won by Obama – and New Hampshire. That's why HDNet's "Dan Rather Reports" reached out to Franklin Pierce to provide Election Day coverage, a "snap shot," of a swing state.

      New Hampshire was considered a swing state largely because of what happened here in the Primaries last winter. Obama was expected to lead the Democratic polls, but a late night rally in Manchester on election eve gave Senator Hilary Clinton an upset victory. On the Republican side, McCain was named the Primary winner late in the night, after many political analysts had counted him out.

     So how was there a reversal when Election Day came ten months later? University of New Hampshire research cites registered independents and youth voters for the turn-around.

     UNH's Carsey Institute utilized the Internal Revenue Service and Census migration data to find that "nearly a third of New Hampshire's current potential voters have become eligible to vote there in just the past eight years, and these same voters are more likely to identify as Democrats than longtime voters."

     Furthermore, it found that "both young voters, 53 percent, and interstate migrant voters [people who recently moved to N.H.], 52 percent, are more likely to be Democratic than established voters." Franklin Pierce contributes directly in the "interstate migrant voters," with a majority of enrolled undergraduate students coming from outside of New Hampshire.

     New Hampshire's voting demographic has quickly shifted from Republican to Democrat, turning a swing state into four key electoral votes for Barack Obama.