The only other explanation is that the actual vote counters changed the outcome however there is one more possibility.
On the Republican side, the NH voters rewarded him for his campaigning efforts over the past 8 years or so. The independents mostly went to Democrat polls 60/40, but.....Many dems went to Republican polls and they voted for McCain because they know and understand that the Dems have a better chance if Republicans do not turn out in the general to vote for someone they can't tolerate. I think there may well have been organized crossover voting by those who would have been Obama supporters. This would also explain the faulty polling against the actual results.
Anyhoo....there are three possible reasons I illustrated off the top of my head. I don't buy the new voter business either. The State always has a high turnout at 70%. This time it was no different. The State is losing population, not gaining, and the numbers just don't add up to me. Very strange......
Well....Now it is a two man race on the Dem side. We still have four or five or six....
We need to get this pared down and soon, or we will end up with a brokered convention, and we will lose bigtime while the Dems run away with it.
Not necessarily. A high turnout boosts one side or the other on the McCain/Romney and Obama/Clinton races, because the folks who weren't following this race last year are just now getting drawn in. The voters for the lower-polling candidates are more likely to be committed for a while now, so those numbers are less volatile.
I haven't drilled down to see if the polls were close (within the margin of error) on the percentages for the second-tier candidates; they got the rankings right, but I don't know how close they were on the numbers, and I'm not up to crunching that at this hour.
If the top two in each party drew more voters than expected, that would lower -- on a percentage basis -- the vote for all the others. But it wouldn't necessarily change their order.