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The established order in the New Hampshire primary has been dashed by upset wins by Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses, political activists said today.

The activists said the perception that Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are unstoppable on the way to winning their party nominations has been severely wounded.

"The big news is that Hillary came in last" among the top three Democratic contenders, said state Rep. Betty Poirier, R-North Attleboro. "The inevitability of her being the nominee is just shattered to pieces."

The same might be said of Poirier's candidate Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who finished a distant second despite spending millions of dollars.

Poirier was scheduled to be in New Hampshire Saturday campaigning for Romney. She said the job for her and other volunteers from Massachusetts is to convince New Hampshire voters that Romney is the genuine, sincere person they know and not the "wax figure" he sometimes comes off as on television.

Poirier said she believes the reason Huckabee won the Republican caucus and Obama won the Democratic contest is that they come off as real people.

"People like to cut through the muck and mire and vote for someone who is not packaged, not perfect," she said.

Huckabee has not campaigned actively in New Hampshire, but Charles Dunn, a political analyst at Regent University School of Government, said Huckabee should not be counted out.

He said New Hampshire has a growing Evangelic Christian community, which could help the former Baptist minister earn a solid third place finish.

Evangelicals were key to Huckabee's win in Iowa, he said, and an important factor in Romney's downfall.

Romney, a Mormon, tried to portray himself as an Evangelical, and that hurt him with the community because it was reviewed as insincere, Dunn said.

If Huckabee holds his own in New Hampshire, he would then be one of the favorites in the South Carolina primary, where he has the backing of the family of the late Gov. Carroll Campbell Jr., Dunn said.

Sen. John McCain is Romney's main opponent in New Hampshire. After a slow start, McCain has surged to the front of the Republican field there, creating a new challenge for Romney.

On the Democratic side, Poirier said she believes Obama will get a big boost from his win in Iowa, leaving Clinton to fight for survival. Darren Major, an Attleboro Democrat who supports Obama, said Iowa proved the pundits wrong in their predictions that Romney and Clinton would win.

"I wasn't surprised Obama won. I was surprised by how much he won by," Major said.

Major said that independent voters who swarmed to Obama in Iowa will be the key to the New Hampshire primary.

In that way, he said, Obama's real competition in New Hampshire will be McCain, not Clinton.

Clinton is sure to get her share of Democratic votes, he said.

But, McCain and Obama both need to attract independents to their party for them to win.

McCain did well among independents in 2000, so Obama must get them to move to his party this time around, Major said.

State Rep. Steve D'Amico, D-Seekonk, was in New Hampshire today campaigning for Democrat John Edwards, who came in second in Iowa.

After attending a 6 a.m. rally for Edwards in Manchester, D'Amico said his candidate is perfectly positioned to do well in New Hampshire.

A close second-place finish in Iowa proved that Edwards can do well without the support of corporate interests, he said.

Obama is too inexperienced, he said, and Clinton is too tied to special interests. New Hampshire will see Edwards as the candidate representing the middle class, vaulting him to the top, D'Amico said.

"People want candidates with substance," he said.

State Rep. Jay Barrows, R-Mansfield, said people should not go too far in reading into the Iowa results, saying voters there do not necessary represent all of America, or even New Hampshire.

He quoted former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu as once saying: "Iowa picks corn. New Hampshire picks presidents."

- By Jim Hand