The collective wisdom of the establishment media seems to have settled on the meme that John McCain is likely, or is at least very probably, going to win New Hampshire on Tuesday, catapulting himself into the position of the establishment alternative (and thus likely slayer) of Mike Huckabee in the Republican primaries. I have to admit that, even before Mitt Romney lost in ignominy on Thursday, I had assumed that the Republicans would settle on old man McCain, just as they had settled on old man Bob Dole in 1996 and old man George H.W. Bush in 1988. Now, however, I must say that I have begun to rethink this conclusion.

In order for McCain to win New Hampshire -- and thus be in a position to be the anti-Huckabee candidate in the Republican race -- he's going to need to have independent voters turn out for him in great numbers. This happened for him in 2000, when the state's independents chose to back him in the GOP primary rather than backing Bill Bradley in the Democratic primary, thus helping him secure a much-needed victory over George W. Bush and helping deny a much-needed victory for Bradley over Al Gore. Indeed, this time around McCain's lead appears to be based entirely on support from independent voters. Zogby tracking numbers out of New Hampshire show McCain holding a 2-point lead over Romney in New Hampshire (within the poll's margin of error), though with McCain holding a significantly larger 13-point advantage over Romney among independent voters deemed likely to participate in the Republican primary.

But a strategy relying on support from independent voters in a Republican primary or caucus is an extremely risky one this time around. As Chris Bowers has documented, for instance, if you were to consider the Iowa Republican and Democratic caucuses to be one event rather than two, independent voters were about three times as likely to caucus with the Democrats than the Republicans (with 75 percent of independent caucus-goers participating in the Democrats' event and just 25 percent participating in that of the Republicans). And the aforementioned Zogby polling seems to come to a similar conclusion: 64 percent of New Hampshire independents likely to vote in Tuesday's primaries plan to vote in the Democratic primary while just 36 percent intend to vote in the Republican primary. This number represented an 8-point shift towards the Democrats in just one day.

Now I don't necessarily expect 75 percent of independents voting Tuesday in New Hampshire to vote in the Democratic rather than Republican primary. At the same time, I do expect a great proportion of those independents -- at least 60 percent -- to vote in the Democratic primary. And with these voters supporting Barack Obama or whomever else in a few days, they won't be supporting McCain. And just as McCain was able to succeed to the bane of Bradley eight years ago, so, too, could Obama succeed this week at the expense of McCain -- perhaps so much so that Obama is able to skate to a fairly easy victory while McCain is stymied in his attempt to knock off Romney.