With 97 percent of the precincts reporting, Kerry is running far ahead of Dean (39 percent to 26 percent) and Clark and Edwards (about 12 percent each) are battling it out for third and fourth. This a great result for Kerry and a poor one for Dean, though DR is not yet persuaded that Kerry is the Annointed One, nor that Dean is irrevocably toast (though he's hurting pretty bad).

Based on the exit polls though, we can confirm the message of the Iowa caucus voting that Democratic voters are increasingly focused on electability and mainstream issues and decreasingly interested in "sending 'em a message" and protest politics around the Iraq war. Consider these data from the exit poll (note that numbers here may change slightly as the National Election Pool reweights its data to reflect the final vote tally).

About one third of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters said flat-out that electability ("can beat Bush") was more important to their vote than issues. Among those voters, Kerry walloped Dean 56 percent to 14 percent. Then, when you look at the specific issues that voters said were most important to their vote, Kerry was way ahead of Dean among the 60 percent of New Hampshire voters who selected the economy and jobs, health care or education, the top three issues in the nation, according to most national polls.

Among health care voters, Kerry led Dean 43 percent to 26 percent; among economy and jobs voters, Kerry led 48 percent to 18 percent and among education voters Kerry led 44 percent to 23 percent. In fact, the only issue voters among whom Dean led were Iraq voters, who favored Dean over Kerry by 37 percent to 33 percent.

Looking at top candidate qualities motivating voters, we find Kerry again doing hugely well among voters who selected "can beat Bush" (62 percent to 10 percent for Dean) or experience (58 percent to 9 percent) and beating Dean by about his margin of overall victory among those who selected "cares about people" or "positive message". Dean, on the other hand, only won among those who selected "stand up for beliefs" (47 percent to 21 percent for Kerry) or "shake things up" (46 percent to 13 percent). But those send-em-a-message and protest voters were only 36 percent of the primary voters, hence Dean's poor overall performance.

This skew in Dean's support is underscored by some of the other (very few) categories where he beat Kerry. He beat Kerry among those who described themselves as "very liberal" (15 percent of primary voters) by 41 percent to 30 percent. And he beat Kerry among those who want to repeal all the Bush tax cuts (32 percent of primary voters) by 37 percent to 34 percent.

The demographics of Dean's support were also not impressive. He lost every age category to Kerry except those 18-29 (where he led by just 34 percent to 33 percent). He lost every income category. He lost every education category, only coming close to Kerry among those with a postgraduate education. He lost among both union and nonunion households (so much for the SEIU/AFSCME endorsements). He lost veterans and non-veterans. He lost those who own a gun and those who don't. And he lost independents and got creamed among moderates.

More on these results tomorrow as well as an assessment of Kerry's chances, both for the nomination and as a general election candidate.