"The New Hampshire electorate has more independents than registered Republicans or Democrats," Lacy said. "Appealing to independents is going to be critical to Republicans."
The significant influence of young voters in electing Obama, however, will lead the Obama re-election campaign to devote time to the Dartmouth campus, according to Lacy.
"You'll see the Obama campaign trying to re-energize student voters who were so important to them four years ago," he said.
Even though Obama will not be contested in the primary campaign, his re-election campaign will have to begin focusing on New Hampshire as early as the primary season because it is a swing state, according to Rod Snyder, president of the Young Democrats of America.
"The Obama campaign will need to pay particular attention to New Hampshire," Snyder said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "It's an extremely important state in terms of electoral strategy for the presidency."
Kaili Lambe '09, president of the New Hampshire Young Democrats, said it is likely that high-profile Democratic strategists will visit campus during the campaign. She cited the campus visit by David Plouffe the 2008 Obama campaign manager to campaign on behalf of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hodes '72 as an example of the national Democratic Party's attention to New Hampshire.
"The College [Democrats] will seek to highlight the areas where we believe Obama has made progress and where the Republican candidates will want to turn back the clock on what he has achieved," Jeremy Kaufmann '12, president of the New Hampshire College Democrats, said. "I am sure Republican candidates will talk plenty about Obama, so I'm not worried that the attention will be elsewhere."
The College Republicans will elect their new executive board on Thursday, and those members will direct the group's activities for the primary campaign, according to College Republicans President Richard Sunderland '11.
College Libertarians President Joshua Schiefelbein '14 said his group will put its support behind whichever Republican candidate best represents its positions, placing particular emphasis on decreasing government intervention in social issues. The group will back one candidate as a singular group rather than encourage individual members to choose which campaigns to support.
"Our goal is not necessarily to increase visibility it's more to have group cohesiveness," Schiefelbein said.
The absence of a Libertarian Party in New Hampshire means that the College Libertarians cannot connect with Libertarian politicians, he said.
Fred Karger, a Republican presidential candidate, said he wants to devote time to visiting Dartmouth in an attempt to make college students a central part of his campaign. By officially announcing his candidacy last week, Karger became the first openly gay presidential contender from a major political party.
Karger said he hopes that his visits to college campuses demonstrate how the Republican Party can better connect with young voters by lessening its emphasis on divisive positions such as opposition to gay marriage.
"Where I'm getting the warmest reception is at college campuses," Karger said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "What the Republican Party needs to do is reach out to college students with good messages of inclusion and drop social issues."
Karger said he will spend approximately 50 percent of his time in New Hampshire between this spring and the state's primary more time than he plans to spend in any other state.
Karger plans to speak at the College's fraternities and sororities throughout the Spring term, and will visit over Green Key weekend, according to Tyler Ford '11, the Dartmouth coordinator for the Karger campaign.
Ford said Karger's support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community makes his candidacy attractive to college students and distinguishes him from other Republicans.
"Young people are some of the biggest supporters of LGBT rights," Ford said. "Republicans have to be a little bit more open to taking college students seriously. There is a lot of exclusivity within the party that turns younger people off."
Karger said his interest in visiting college campuses was inspired by the energy that the Obama campaign generated during the 2008 campaign.
"I will be appearing at college campuses and showing that there's great student interest there," Karger said. That's what Obama did he went to youth with an appeal to come aboard his campaign."
College students can influence political discourse during the New Hampshire primary campaign by stressing the link between job creation and student debt, according to Rob Lockwood, the communications director for the College Republican National Committee.
Lockwood pointed to the CRNC's "Don't Put it on Our Tab" campaign as an example of an effective way to connect the otherwise-abstract notion of national debt to students' lives. The campaign seeks to raise college students' awareness of how enormous government spending will ultimately leave students with the burden of repaying the national debt, according to Lockwood.
The national debt's impact on all students renders it a "generational issue" that Republican presidential candidates must address when visiting college campuses, Lockwood said.
Negative student reaction to recent steps by the Republican-controlled state legislature, including proposed legislation that would have prevented students from voting in the state and the proposal to cut education spending suggest that college students in New Hampshire may feel alienated by Republican presidential candidates' efforts to campaign alongside New Hampshire state Republicans, Lambe said.
"It will be interesting to see if the Republican candidates are campaigning with local legislators, many of whom are taking a radical approach to legislation this year," she said. "We're going to see a lot of young people turning away from their radical right wing agenda."
The Tea Party movement's influence in leading Republican presidential candidates to embrace conservative positions will make it difficult for candidates to craft messages that resonate with voters under 30, only 10 percent of whom identify with the Tea Party, Snyder said.
"Candidates are lurching right pretty quickly in large part due to the perceived strength of Tea Party movement and the success of a lot of Republicans who were identified with the Tea Party movement [in the 2010 midterm elections]," Snyder said.
Sadhana Hall, the deputy director of the Rockefeller Center, said the Center will work with student political organizations to bring candidates and election strategists to campus during the New Hampshire primary campaign.
"These are the people who are going to be making public policy in our country," Hall said. "I can't think of a better service that the Rockefeller Center can give to make sure students understand the public policy issues that candidates stand for."
