CANDIDATES TAKE RACE NATIONWIDE.

Byline: Tom Fiedler Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

The leading Republican presidential candidates, fanning out across the country after Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, are carving the Republican electorate into distinct chunks.

And as the race for the party's nomination focuses on such issues as abortion, immigrants, gays, age and economic nationalism, there is less and less overlap between their constituencies.

That means Pat Buchanan, Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas, and Lamar Alexander may each collect the encouragement he needs to continue for several weeks. But it also means that the longer they scrap for the nomination, the greater the likelihood they will drive wedges into the Republican coalition of social and economic conservatives.

The three top finishers in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary ventured across the country Wednesday, laying the groundwork for upcoming primaries. It marked a dramatic change from the intense campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire, which are the political equivalent of house-to-house combat.

Buchanan, a former CNN commentator who won 27 percent of the vote, began the day in South Carolina. That state hosts the first southern primary March 2 and appears likely to be the site of the next major confrontation.

By late afternoon, he traveled on to North and South Dakota, which hold their primaries Tuesday, along with Arizona.

Buchanan criticized party leaders who worry about his campaign's appeal to working Americans, saying: "I'm standing for those folks. Why doesn't the party stand for me?"

Dole, too, headed for the Dakotas, where his ties to farm interests should help the Senate majority leader right his listing campaign.

Dole said his campaign against Buchanan would be "a fight for mainstream conservatism vs. extremism. . . . It is a fight for hope over fear."

Alexander stayed in New Hampshire for much of the day trying to capitalize on his close third-place finish. He went on to South Carolina and plans stops in Georgia and Tampa, Fla., Thursday.

As he did Tuesday night, Alexander continued to urge Dole to step aside "and let Pat and I have a contest about the future of this party." Alexander said Dole's second consecutive weak finish showed fatal vulnerabilities as a campaigner.

Dole dismissed both the call and the candidate, who Dole's aides said lacked the resources to match the Kansan in the weeks ahead.

Interviews by several news organizations with New Hampshire voters after they left the polls Tuesday suggested Buchanan's candidacy is backed heavily by men with modest incomes and limited education and by people who say they support the so-called religious right. This demonstrates that the former commentator's message of economic nationalism - protecting the American worker from foreign competition and immigration - has mobilized those people who feel most threatened by such forces.

Buchanan received 29 percent of all the votes cast by men Tuesday, more than his rivals, according to a CNN-USA Today survey. But he collected just 24 percent of those from women, less than either Alexander or Dole.

A third of Buchanan's voters had only a high school education and earned less than $30,000. And a third said they voted for Ross Perot, the Texas independent, in the 1992 presidential race.

Buchanan also earned his claim to speak for party conservatives. Fifty-eight percent of the New Hampshire voters who labeled themselves as "very conservative" voted for Buchanan.

By contrast, Alexander got just 9 percent and Dole 14 percent from those hard-core conservatives, according to the poll.

And Buchanan claimed 54 percent of the votes cast by those who said they agreed with the goals of the religious right, which included a ban on abortion. Dole got 11 percent and Alexander 12 percent of these religious conservatives.

Dole, 72, did especially well among voters over 65 - his peers, who responded to his message of being experienced and "tested." He also did better than all others among Republicans who earned more than $100,000, had at least a college degree and who voted for George Bush in the 1992 election.

In short, Dole's slice of the voters appears to be older mainstream Republicans with strong ties to the party.

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