TICKER MORNING EDITION: Monday, January 7, 2008

Making news today:

Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, spent his Saturday looking for the Obama bounce. Yesterday, it found him.

Barack Obama has a 10-point edge over Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire in the CNN/WMUR poll released Sunday afternoon, with 39 percent support to Clinton’s 29 percent. John Edwards has slipped to 16 percent. The apparent Obama surge seems to be sapping support from Clinton and Edwards, both down several points from the last CNN poll.

The electability issue is now officially a non-starter for the Clinton campaign: 42 percent of those primary voters now say Obama has the best chance of beating the Republican nominee. Even more troubling for the New York senator, two out of three Democrats – a new high - now say the ability to bring change is more important than experience.

That isn’t true on the Republican side, where part of John McCain’s edge over rival Mitt Romney arises from the fact that 40 percent of Granite State GOP voters say he’s got the right experience to be president, as opposed to 26 percent for the former Massachusetts governor. McCain now leads Romney among primary voters, 32 to 26 percent. Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul follow at 14, 11, and 10 percent.

One of the other major factors in McCain’s rise is the growing numbers of independents who now say they’ll be voting in the Republican primary. It’s a development that should have been bad news for Obama, but isn’t – a result that underscores Obama’s new strength.

If there’s a secret to stemming his momentum here, his opponents have just a day left to find it.

– CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand