Senator Barack Obama returned to New Hampshire after a solid victory at the Iowa caucuses early Friday morning. He held two rallies in the state, urging voters to embrace his message the way Iowa did Thursday.

“What they realized,” he said of Iowans, “was that the real gamble was to have the same old folks do the same old things, playing the same old Washington game over and over and over again and expecting different results. That’s the gamble we cannot afford. That’s the risk we cannot take. We need to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history, and New Hampshire, that’s what you can do in four day’s time.”

It is evident that Obama is seeking support from New Hampshire’s all-important Independent vote. Throughout the day, Obama touted his ability to bring Republican and Independent voters into his coalition. “If there are Republicans and Independents who are working with me, that makes us stronger and I want to change the electoral map in America. I don’t want another election like 2000 and 2004,” he said in Concord.

So how much weight is the Obama campaign putting on his Iowa victory? Obama himself told reporters en route from Iowa to New Hampshire early this morning that Iowa “sparked a potential movement for change in the country that will be inspiring for a lot of people.”

In the post-glow from the Obama victory, one of the candidate’s Iowa surrogates suggested that the candidate would fare well in the Granite State because the campaign “always” thought he was a stronger candidate there than Iowa (despite his lower poll numbers here in New Hampshire).

But an Obama supporter outside Friday’s annual Democratic 100 Club Dinner fundraiser in Milford, New Hampshire, informed me that, although she hopes Obama can pull off a victory, it seems unlikely because of the state’s views on race. She also pointed out that the state was among the last in the nation to recognize Martin Luther King Day. It wasn’t until 2000 that the state recognized the holiday.