MANCHESTER, N.H. — Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee took their messages of political change to New Hampshire yesterday, trying to maintain momentum from their big wins in Iowa's caucuses.

With Obama trying to hold off fellow Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, and Huckabee battling against no fewer than five Republican rivals, the campaign looked to turn increasingly negative and move at a blinding pace.

New Hampshire is a state where voters have never had a problem shaking up the status quo, and the presidential race here is shaping up as a frenzied one in which several candidates in both parties try to get their campaigns back on track. A compressed primary calendar gives them just four days to do so.

Clinton, who finished third in Iowa, served notice she intends to target Obama as too inexperienced to be president.

"It's hard to know exactly where he stands, and people need to ask that," she said. "Everybody is supposed to be vetted and tested."

Mitt Romney, the Republican runner-up in Iowa, fired on two fronts — diminishing Huckabee's victory in Iowa as a fluke and disparaging John McCain as a Washington insider.

"I did well among evangelicals, just not as well as the preacher did," Romney said of Huckabee, an ordained minister whose Iowa victory was fueled by Christian conservatives. Polls showed Romney won support from about 1 in 5 evangelical voters, while more than half backed Huckabee.

The early maneuvering and polling suggest the accelerated primary sprint could become a two-person battle in each party — Obama vs. Clinton and Romney vs. McCain.

The Democratic front-runners hit the ground in New Hampshire on less than three hours sleep and immediately appealed for the Granite State voters to start the snowball, which are in abundance here, down the hill.

Obama, who was born in Hawai'i and attended Punahou School, defended his message of hope, kicking off a speech to a crowded high school auditorium with strains from Paul Simon — "these are the days of miracles and wonder" — while Clinton ended her speech in an airport hangar with the song "Taking Care of Business."

Andrew Smith, a University of New Hampshire political science professor who oversaw the most recent poll in the state, said the Democratic race is tight.

The three leading Democrats are closely aligned on the issues, so what matters to New Hampshire voters is selecting the Democrat with the best chance of becoming president, he said.

"What they're looking for is a candidate who can win. And the biggest indicator that you can win an election is by winning an election," Smith said.

CLINTON VOWS CHANGE

When Clinton addressed the Nashua crowd of about 500 people yesterday, she tried to draw distinctions and show she was the most electable choice and could deliver on promises.

"I'll be a president who won't just call for change, or a president who won't just demand change, but a president who produces change," the New York senator said.

She suggested she is asking for votes based on her track record, "not a leap of faith." She also stressed that she is the one candidate who has weathered blistering attacks, which she predicted will be aimed at the Democratic nominee.

"I am tested and I am proven. I have been through the fires," she said.

While others have accused her of being polarizing, she pointed to endorsements and her ability to build a coalition with the electoral numbers needed to win.

"I am not running for president to see the Republicans take this away from us again," Clinton said.

Edwards dismissed her as "the candidate of the status quo."

"People are going to decide between a candidate who is not the candidate of money ... but somebody who will actually fight for the changes that we need, and it will be between Senator Obama and myself," the former North Carolina senator said. He has criticized Obama for arguing for a consensus approach to the campaign and governing, rather than fighting against corporate interests.

Later, Obama said that divisive messages were the wrong approach.

"Certainly you'll hear it over the next several days: '(Don't) believe your own eyes, don't trust your own gut, your own instincts,' " he told a crowd of 2,000 at Concord High School.

Opponents will say, he predicted, that "Obama has not been in Washington long enough. He needs to be seasoned and stewed. We need to boil all the hope out of him, so he's like us, and then he'll be ready."

Invoking his Iowan win repeatedly, he said the gamble is using the same approaches and expecting different results. And he implicitly criticized Edwards' focus on fighting battles.

"There are no shortages of confrontation in Washington, people," Obama said.

ROMNEY VS. MCCAIN

The Romney camp aired blistering TV spots challenging McCain, an Arizona senator, on immigration and tax cuts.

At a town hall meeting at a community center in Manchester, Romney said his experience in business, rescuing the Olympic Games and as governor of Massachusetts underscored his ability to change the status quo.

"If you want change in Washington, you've got to send somebody who knows how to change things," he said.

He said he was happy with his second-place finish in Iowa and declared McCain and Clinton as the big caucus losers.

"There were two people running for office who have been around Washington for a long, long time ... and both of them were rejected pretty handily by the voters," he said.

"If you really want to have change," he said, "you want to have somebody who will bring change, somebody from outside Washington, not a Washington insider."

McCain said he has better experience and judgment on war and terrorism than his Republican rivals.

He accused Romney of launching false and negative attacks and tweaked the former Massachusetts governor for a shifting record on issues such as abortion and gay rights.

"My record is very strong as a fiscal conservative, and I've not changed position on issues every couple of years," he said.

Huckabee reveled in his Iowa victory, at one point picking up the bass guitar at a rally in the gymnasium at New England College to play Wilson Picket's "In the Midnight Hour."

He said his appeal is broader than to evangelicals. He emphasized his appeal on economic issues, pitching his plan to anti-tax New Hampshire Republicans to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax.

"Evangelicals did play an important role, but so did people who support the fair tax. So did the Second Amendment people," he said.