WSFA.com: News Weather and Sports for Montgomery, AL.New Hampshire: A question of who comes in second?

(RNN) - The polls have opened in New Hampshire early Tuesday, where voters will make their voice heard in the nation's first true primary and second step toward choosing a Republican presidential candidate for the 2012 election.

The race has been neck-and-neck so far, with ballots cast and counted in the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch, which traditionally holds its voting at midnight. The six voters who took the polls to support the Republican presidential hopefuls gave former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney two votes, the same amount given to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. Both former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Texas Congressman Ron Paul got one vote each, according to the Washington Post.

Polls show Romney takes a comfortable, even commanding lead into the primary. A Suffolk University/7 News poll of 500 likely GOP primary voters released Monday shows Romney with 33 percent of the vote. Paul polled second place with 20 percent and Huntsman came in third with 13 percent of the vote.

Romney, considered the front-runner to the nomination, edged the late surging former Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum by just eight votes in the Iowa caucuses last Tuesday.

"It's not going to be this primary or the next, but we'll have several races down the road. This field will narrow, it'll be a one-on-one race and it will be Mitt Romney against Rick Santorum," Santorum said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday.

Santorum polled fifth in the Suffolk poll, behind Gingrich.

Santorum and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who lean more socially conservative than would typically poll well in a state like New Hampshire, have largely turned their eyes and the future of their campaigns toward South Carolina, the first southern primary, to be held on Jan. 21.

Perry skipped New Hampshire entirely, sinking all his efforts into a strong finish in the Palmetto State.

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