DERRY, N.H. – James Connelly lingered after Republican Mitt Romney had shaken the last hand and left a recent political rally at Derry's Pinkerton Academy. “He promised just the right thing – change, change, change, change,” Connelly said.

Savoring the sound of the repetition, the 58-year-old owner of a chemical lawn-treatment company added, “That is what we want.”

It is a word being repeated an awful lot as New Hampshire voters hear the final pitches from Democratic and Republican candidates before tomorrow's primary. But it's increasingly clear that it means different things to different people.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is most closely attached to the promise of change in Washington. But there is no candidate of either party who is not trying to grab the label and tap into what seems to be a deep reservoir of anger about the status quo.

That effort began long ago but exploded in intensity after Thursday's Iowa caucuses when Obama and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, rode the promise of change to victories that embarrassed the front-runners closely associated with their party's establishment.

For Connelly, it is a welcome message.

“I am just so sick of politics. The same stuff day-in, day-out – a lot of cheap talk. A lot of promise to do things and nothing gets done,” he said.

Sitting nearby at the 200-year-old school, Richie LeBlanc, a 23-year-old lumber mill employee, said he is looking for a candidate who will get results instead of merely fighting in Washington.

The message has been so overwhelming that talk of it dominated whole segments of the Saturday night debates and forced the candidates other than Huckabee and Obama to make sure their stump speeches included promises of change.

The challenge has been greatest for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who offered Iowa voters her experience in contrast to the change offered by Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. She was chagrined to see that voters overwhelmingly preferred change over experience and handed her a third-place finish. When she met with New Hampshire voters in Dover on Saturday, she found people wanting to support her but eager to see if she represents a break from the partisanship that they associate with Washington.

“I know we need change. I would like to get away from everything being so far-right and so far-left. It should be more of a partnership,” said Nottingham resident Carrie Bounds, 48, a mother with two children. Then, capturing the feelings of so many in both parties, she added, “Just stop fighting and get things done.”

But the bipartisan agreement breaks down after this. Republicans and Democrats do not agree on what they want to get done.

Democrats aim most of their ire at President Bush and a war in Iraq that they want to end. Republicans rarely mention the war but are angry at Washington's failure to secure the borders and trim spending.

“Democrats, when they say change, they are saying we don't like George Bush, let's get rid of him and do more liberal stuff,” said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “Republicans who want change want to get control of federal spending and try to get the federal budget under control. But they also care about foreign policy and national security and who can best lead on those issues.”

McCain believes his reputation as a deficit hawk and party maverick positions him well on the change issue. But he is under attack by Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has added a line in his speech taking aim at McCain.

Even though it was Romney who lost a big lead in Iowa and was overtaken by Huckabee, he now tells voters that the big losers there were “Hillary Clinton, who has been around Washington forever, and John McCain, who's been there even longer.”

He added, “The American people recognize we're not going to change Washington by sending back the same old faces and just have them change chairs.”

Democrats scoff at Republican efforts to stand for change – particularly because they are afraid to offend other Republicans by breaking with Bush on anything important.

“Voters will see through it as almost comical. 'Republican' really means status quo,” said former Rep. Ben “Cooter” Jones of Georgia, a top adviser to Edwards. Jones took similar aim at Obama, accusing him of “plagiarizing” Edwards' message of change and not having the toughness to deliver.

The candidate with the most at stake and the direst need to retool her message is Clinton. In New Hampshire, she is trying to convince voters that it takes her experience to actually deliver on the change. Her argument is that she can be more effective than Obama's oratory or Edwards' anti-corporate anger.

“We just think this is a false choice,” said Clinton senior adviser Mandy Grunwald. “It is not one or the other, and I think voters understand that it takes experience to make change.”

University of New Hampshire pollster Andrew E. Smith said that message still may work for Clinton even though it failed in Iowa. He said there has been some over-reaction to the Iowa results.

He said the allure of change is a little stronger in this election but that it shows up in every election. “If you have a choice between change and experience, voters are always going to go for change,” Smith said.

This time, New Hampshire Democrats are opting for change over experience by 61 percent to 29 percent, according to Smith's most recent poll.

There is a tradition of support here for Democratic “change” candidates, including Eugene McCarthy in 1968, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Gary Hart in 1984 and Bill Bradley in 2000.

“You see younger voters and more ideological liberals in New Hampshire and higher-educated voters fall in love with those guys, the change candidates,” Smith said. But then most of them fail to get the nomination because they are up against establishment candidates with stronger support nationally, he added.

Clinton is in trouble, said Smith, because “she never got that sense of inevitability as the institutional candidate to counter the change message.”

And her years in Washington often work against her.

“When I see Hillary and McCain, I think of has-beens, old school, no change,” said Bob Connal, a 48-year-old engineer from Derry, once a Republican and now an independent.

“We need change,” he said.