Race on for second place in New Hampshire primary New Hampshire voters go to the polls on Tuesday to choose their preferred Republican candidate for president, but with Mitt Romney all but guaranteed to win, the competition has turned into a race for second place. Mr Romney, the former governor of neighbouring Massachusetts and the frontrunner in national polls, has a commanding lead in the Granite State and is expected to win the primary by a wide margin. IN US & Canada This would make him the first Republican candidate, incumbent presidents excepted, to win both Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two voting states. "If I am president of the United States, I will not forget New Hampshire," Mr Romney said at a campaign rally in Bedford on Monday night as he continued to rally support and halt a slide in the polls resulting from increasingly aggressive attacks on his record as a businessman. The latest Suffolk University/7News poll showed that Mr Romney's lead had narrowed further, dropping a full 10 points from five days ago. He lost a further two percentage points in the most recent overnight poll, but still maintained a 13-point lead over his nearest rival with 33 per cent. Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, came second with 20 per cent, while Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who is betting his entire bid on a strong showing in New Hampshire, had 13 per cent support. Newt Gingrich followed with 11 per cent and Rick Santorum with 10 per cent. The second place is hotly sought after because it would give a boost to the candidates vying to position themselves as the alternative to Mr Romney, who much of the Republican party base views as too moderate. "Second place would be a dream come true," Mr Santorum, who came second to Mr Romney by only eight votes in Iowa, said Monday as he campaigned furiously. Mr Paul is expected to do well in a state whose motto is "Live free or die," while Mr Huntsman hopes his centrist positions will appeal to independents, who are allowed to vote in the state's primary. The nine voters of Dixville Notch, a tiny New Hampshire settlement, voted shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning, putting Mr Romney tied with Jon Huntsman with two votes each. Mr Gingrich and Mr Paul each got one vote, while President Barack Obama received three votes of confidence. "I think everybody was expecting Romney to win here and Huntsman to maybe get a vote," Tom Tillotson, one of the Dixville Notch residents, told some of the 200 reporters who had descended on polling booth. Maybe they'll be on the same ticket together, who knows. He had my vote going in so somebody else agreed with me. Mr Romney's rivals are certainly doing everything they can to narrow the front-runner's margin of victory and take the wind out of his sails before the much more closely contested primary in South Carolina on January 21. That state is much more socially conservative and has a strong evangelical Christian streak, which makes Mr Romney a hard sell. He failed to win a single county in South Carolina during his 2008 presidential bid. The other contenders have been attacking Mr Romney over his tenure as head of Bain Capital, the private equity fund, portraying him as a greedy and ruthless job cutter, rather than the job creator of the candidate's claims. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who has unleashed a barrage of negative ads at Mr Romney, returning the treatment he endured from his opponent in Iowa, accused the former private equity executive of "looting" companies while he ran Bain. Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Mr Gingrich said, suggesting that Mr Romney's business background was a fatal flaw that would make him unable to beat Mr Obama. "If somebody's going to crumble, they better crumble before the nomination," Mr Gingrich said. Mr Romney did himself no favours on Monday when he chose unfortunate words to say that Americans should be free to choose whatever health insurance plan they wanted, rather than accept their employers" scheme. "If you don't like what they do ... I like being able to fire people who provide services to me," Mr Romney told the Nashua chamber of commerce, providing a sound bite that his rivals wasted no time using to their advantage. Detractors even created a "I like being able to fire people" ringtone for people to download to their mobile phones, and the Democratic National Committee created a video with the headline: "Mitt Romney Likes Firing People." Mr Romney's campaign said the remarks had been taken out of context and defended his record at Bain, where it says he created more than 100,000 jobs. It has not, however, provided figures for how many jobs were lost during that time so there is no net figure.