With only one day remaining before the polls open in the GOP New Hampshire primary, it's increasingly looking as if the only question is Mitt Romney's margin of victory.

Romney survived two back-to-back GOP candidates' debates in New Hampshire, although by the second debate on Sunday morning Romney's rivals had toughened their rhetoric against the former Massachusetts governor.

A slew of opinion polls were published over the weekend showing Romney unchallenged in the lead in New Hampshire, although as the primary day comes closer Romney has seen some inevitable slippage in his ratings.

With some candidates and the media regarding the New Hampshire primary as merely an appetizer for the main course in South Carolina later this month, Romney's rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are laying the groundwork for that campaign.

Gingrich's supporters in particular are preparing a big hit on Romney's record as a venture capitalist at Bain Capital, by finding the distribution of a half-hour-long documentary on the subject – taking a page out of the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry in 2004.

Ron Paul – in second place in most New Hampshire polls – meanwhile is ignoring Romney and training his fire on the threats from the likes of Santorum.

We'll be following the local and national campaigns today, with correspondents on the ground in New Hampshire.

What the papers say, New Hampshire primary edition, your should-reads for Monday:

• Romney at Bain: Big Gains, Some Busts – Wall Street Journal

The WSJ looks at Romney's record at Bain Capital, examining 77 businesses Bain invested in while Romney led the firm from 1984 start until 1999, to see how they fared. It finds the overall record is largely in Romney's favour, but that many also went under.

• Mitt Romney Holds Lead But Jon Huntsman Gaining – Huffington Post

The HuffPost's resident pollster Mark Blumenthal says the New Hampshire polls released over the weekend show Mitt Romney heading for a comfortable win, as well as Jon Huntsman closing in on Ron Paul for second place.

• Romney Re-Enrolls In The Mittness Protection – Buzzfeed Politics

Its' been more than a week since Mitt Romney held a press conference, points out Buzzfeed. "Why? Romney thinks that unscripted questions are more likely to hurt him than help, and he might be right. He's the presumptive nominee, and he has a ton of money — why not speak through media that you can control, like advertisements and one-on-one interviews?"

• With One Day to Go in New Hampshire, Who Can Catch Romney? – PBS Newshour

The answer to that question is "no one". But this is a complete round-up of all the campaigning action, including the Romney campaign's closing argument to supporters.

• For Gingrich, attacks on Romney come with a risk – Associated Press

Plowing through New Hampshire before Tuesday's primary, Gingrich is indulging an innate sharp edge that has won him attention - and enemies - from his days as a back-bencher in the House in the 1980s. Now as always, he risks nicking himself in the process.

• Newt's Friend Antes Up – TPM

The Gingrich/Adelson friendship just became a much more critical part of the 2012 calculus. And it has the potential to seriously complicate Mitt Romney's road to the White House.

Where in New Hampshire are the candidates today?

Hats off to Newt Gingrich for his 9pm event today – going to a BCS College Football National Championship watch party in Concord. It was Gingrich, you may recall, who had a massice fail in the debate on Saturday when he claimed he'd rather be at home watching the college basketball final. Wrong on two counts: sport and date.

Mitt Romney

11.35am: Tours Gilchrist Metal Fabricating, Hudson, New Hampshire

5.55pm: Holds a rally. McKelvie Intermediate School, Bedford

Rick Santorum

10.45am: Hosts a Faith, Family and Freedom town hall. Derry-Salem Elks Lodge, Salem

12:30pm: Meets with patrons at Mary Ann's Diner, Derry

3.30pm: Hosts a town hall, Somersworth

7.15pm: Hosts a campaign rally, Manchester

Ron Paul

10.30am: Holds a meet and greet in Hollis

2pm: Holds an employee town hall meeting at Timberland

Newt Gingrich

11am: Holds town hall, Manchester

1pm: Holds a Nashua Rotary meet and greet, Nashua

2pm: Holds BAE Systems town hall, Nashua

4pm: Holds Hudson town hall, Hudson

6pm: Visits Newt 2012 NH headquarters, Manchester

9pm: Attends BCS College Football National Championship watch party, Concord

Jon Huntsman

10.15am: Visits Mary's Bakery and Cafe, Henniker

11.15am: Visits Eagle Square, Concord

1pm: Visits Harvey's Bakery, Dover

3.45pm: Visits Crosby's Bakery, Nashua

7pm: Holds a rally, Exeter Town Hall, Exeter

And then there's Rick Perry in South Carolina:

10.15am: Participates in Main Street Walk, Pickens

12.05pm: Attends First Monday Club luncheon, Greenville

5.30pm: Holds meet and greet. Stax's Original Restaurant, Greenville

Here we go: a clip from the Newt Gingrich Super Pac-funded attack docudrama aimed directly at Mitt Romney's career as chief executive of vulture capitalist fund Bain Capital.

Distribute a copy of this DVD to every Republican voter in South Carolina and Florida, and Mitt Romney's poll ratings might not look so good.

Oh dear, Mitt Romney. Here's the taylor-made soundbite for the next round of attack ads: Romney saying "I like being able to fire people".

Here's the quote from Romney – talking about health insurance, bizarrely enough, given his well-publicised Romneycare problem:

I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.

Actually the more hilarious statement here is "the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy," which isn't true. The insurance company has an incentive to fire you if you are unhealthy. It's an economic principle called adverse selection, and you'd think the brilliant "I know how the economy works" businessman candidate would know that.

And that's why a big chunk of Obamacare is devoted to stopping insurance companies from dumping patients with the dreaded "pre-existing conditions" – but of course Romney wants to abolish it.

Bill Keller – the New York Times's best columnist if you only count Frank Bruni and Tom Friedman – pushes the "Hillary for vice president" button.

Bill lays out various scenarios under which Hillary Clinton could replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket but then only minutely spoils the effect with his last line, in which he admits: "it's just a fantasy."

The Guardian's Janine Gibson sends this Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from a Rick Santorum event at one of his Faith, Family and Freedom town halls in Salem.

Among the buttons, if you squint hard you'll see ones reading "Fear the vest" and "Why women love Santorum". (That last one is a gift for Dan Savage, the man who gave Rick such a boost on Google.)

Janine reports: "I would send you some highlights from Santorum's speech. But there are none.... He's teaching us about oil pipelines now. He's just talking. There aren't sentences. I'm desperate for Diane Sawyer to pop up and interrupt him with a 20 minute question."

Update: "Rick is grateful to God that America borders Mexico and not Libya or Tunisia because that would be awful for immigration. Borders are also why Europe's in all that trouble."

Today's poll round-up, and there have been a blizzard of the things in the last two days, all much of a muchness but showing a slight slide in Mitt Romney's sky-high ratings and an uptick for Jon Huntsman and others.

• Suffolk University/7News:

33% Mitt Romney

20% Ron Paul

13% Jon Huntsman

11% Newt Gingrich

10% Rick Santorum

2% Buddy Roemer

1% Rick Perry

In that poll, 6% of respondents said they were "undecided" as to whether or not they might change their mind. Uh?

• WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll:

41% Mitt Romney

17% Ron Paul

11% Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum

8% Newt Gingrich

1% Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer

• PPP:

35% Mitt Romney

18% Ron Paul

16% Jon Huntsman

12% Newt Gingrich

11% Rick Santorum

3% Buddy Roemer

1% Rick Perry

The Guardian's Adam Gabbatt is on Ron Paul's trail in New Hampshire – and finds the good doctor offending some curious voters with a rushed visit:

Ron Paul's first event of the day was supposed to be a tasty breakfast at Moe Joe's diner in east Manchester. Unfortunately for Paul, the place was absolutely packed by the time of his arrival, and he and his team got spooked, leaving after a very short amount of time due to the crush. Even more unfortunately for Paul, one angry New Hampshire voters followed him out to his car as he tried to escape, protesting loudly and preventing Paul from closing his car door. As a swarm of television cameras watched, Karen Heller berated the Texan congressman for not meeting people more thoroughly. Heller had brought her elderly mother to Moe Joe's because "she saw Ron Paul in the debate and liked him", but said Paul did not even enter the room they were sitting in, let alone press the flesh.

Adam caught up with Karen Heller after she confronted Ron Paul. The good news is that Paul's campaign has offered her and her mother a private meeting with the candidate.

Stop the virtual presses: Todd Palin has endorsed Newt Gingrich. Everthing else is literally a footnote in history today.

Yes, the husband of Sarah Palin. What this is all about I don't know. More soon.

Adam Gabbatt has moved on to see Newt Gingrich hold a Q&A at an office in Manchester, although with Gingrich there was a lot more A than Qs.

Gingrich talked for about 20 minutes, managing to mention at least 20 times that he had known and worked with Ronald Reagan before opening up to questions from the 30 or so employees. Sadly, no one went for the obvious: "Mr Gingrich, did you know Ronald Reagan at all?" gag. The former speaker was instead asked about his private sector experience. After leaving politics, "we ran four small businesses", Gingrich said. He then listed them: "There was the Gingrich Group ... Gingrich Communications ... Gingrich Productions" and finally "Gingrich Holdings, which ran them all".

As always with Newt, it really is all about him. Adam notes: "Gingrich did not specifically state how this experience would translate into running the country."

Can you feel the Huntsmentum? Yes, rocketing up in the polls into figures higher than 9, Jon Huntsman launches an ad attacking Mitt Romney:

About time, you say? Enjoy it Huntsmaniacs, because this may be the high point of the 2012 campaign for you.

Silly Buzzfeed Politics, who have reposted Mitt Romney's 2002 survey for Planned Parenthood. It shows that Mitt Romney v2002 was in favour of keeping the status quo on abortion, and mentions his support for state funding of abortion for low income women.

But that's ancient history! Mitt's changed: In 2002 he was running in liberal Massachusetts. In 2012 he's running in a conservative Republican primary. These days he wouldn't even answer a survey from Planned Parenthood, let alone say he was essentially pro-abortion.

More on Todd Palin's endorsement of Newt Gingrich – this is unlikely to have any impact in New Hampshire, where Mrs Todd Palin wasn't hugely popular. But South Carolina, who knows?

ABC News had the scoop:

Sarah Palin's husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today. But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain's 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide "who is best able to go up against Barack Obama," Todd Palin said. Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker's campaign.

Despite that, Newt Gingrich just now says that "[Todd Palin]'s going to be speaking out on behalf of my candidacy and I really appreciate that." So someone talked to someone somewhere, unless Newt's so awesome he can see the future.

Stop what you are doing – unless you are busy – and go over to another part of the Guardian website to follow the live Q&A on the New Hampshire primary with political scientist Dante Scala.

Hot non-New Hampshire political news: White House chief of staff Bill Daley is stepping down from being White House chief of staff, as of soon. There's a press conference at 3pm ET – annoying every senior political journalist in America who will be hard at work crafting their "What New Hampshire means" thumbsuckers for tomorrow in a hotel room in Manchester.

In case you missed it, Mitt Romney said this yesterday on the campaign trail in New Hampshire:

I know what it's like to worry whether you're gonna get fired. There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip.

I think Mitt has confused "pink slip" with "golden parachute," which is a more familiar experience for CEOs such as Romney.

Even Rick Perry could make hay out of this one – and promptly did so this morning in South Carolina:

I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he'd have enough of them to hand out.

Barak Obama is holding a statement to note the resignation of his chief of staff, Bill Daley, and announce his replacement by the current White House budget director Jacob Lew.

Naturally, Obama pays tribute to Daley's brief and unhappy tenure, which lasted barely a year after Rahm Emanuel left to run to be mayor of Chicago (which was Daley's previous job). Obama said Daley had performed "extraordinary work" in an "extraordinary year."

According to Obama, Daley is leaving the White House to "spend more time with his family," which is an extraordinary novel reason in modern politics.

Jon Huntsman joins the queue of people taking a free shot at Mitt Romney for his spectacularly inept "I enjoy firing people, me" line this morning.

Speaking at a meeting in Concord, Huntsman said:

Governor Romney enjoys firing people, I enjoy creating jobs. It may be that he's slightly out of touch with the economic reality playing out in America, and that's a dangerous place for someone to be.

That's not exactly giving it both barrels. But it did provoke this straw-clutching response from Romney surrogate John Sununu: "Sometimes the socialists are Republicans."

Maybe all those big poll leads in New Hampshire have made the Romney campaign fat and lazy, if that's the best they could do: Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, all well-known socialists.

After all the nonsense about Obama's European socialism coming from the Romney campaign, among others, GQ has the sensible idea of talking to some actual European socialists about it, notably two Danish journalists who are in New Hampshire:

Romney waxed patriotic about the American work ethic: "I certainly don't want to become more like Europe, I want to stay true to the principles that made us the nation that we are." From the rest of the audience, the line drew big applause. The two Danes just laughed, cracking loud jokes to one another in lazy, socialist native tongue.

The Guardian's Adam Gabbatt sees Rick Santorum do some power-walking through his potential supporters:

Santorum breezed into MaryAnn's diner in Derry this afternoon, shaking hands, chatting and generally distracting diners from their food. People didn't seem to mind Santorum so much, but the manager of MaryAnn's did object to the 20 or so television cameras following the former senator, promptly kicking out the camera crews. Sitting at the counter was Mary Jo Weber, 42, who said she was coming round to the idea of Santorum: "I like what he stands for, he stands up and says what he thinks and feels." "I drove an hour and a quarter to be here," Weber said as Santorum whizzed past, missing her efforts to say hello. Josh Smith, a bearded 25-year-old, had slightly more luck, managing to pose a question to Santorum as he power-walked past the bar. "I asked what he wants to do about human trafficking," Smith said. So what did Santorum offer to do? "He said he wants to do everything he can." Human trafficking solved, Smith said he remains undecided for whom to vote.

We haven't much opportunity to say this during the Republican contest so far, but Rick Perry is cleaning Mitt Romney's clock today.

Exhibit A. Warning: gets annoying. Quickly.

That Mitt Romney is a shape-changing chameleon is received wisdom. But over on Cif America, Jason Farago argues convincingly that Romney is in fact an unwavering, steel-spined warrior for the cause of corporate capitalism:

What is the traditional objection to Romney? That he is a "flip-flopper", the original sin of American politics. In Massachusetts in the 1990s, he used to do fundraisers with Planned Parenthood; now he stresses "the sanctity of life". He used to seem all right with gay people; now he's big on "traditional marriage". He made the right noises about climate change; now he makes the wrong ones. He supported the Brady Act, the landmark 1993 gun control bill; now, he tells the NRA that the second amendment is a kind of holy revelation. But on one issue Mitt Romney has never flip-flopped. From his time at Bain Capital, where he squeezed companies to death to extract billions for investors, to his tenure in office and his eternal campaigning since, Romney is the best friend a corporate raider or titan of finance could ask for.

Exciting news: Eric Cantona is running for the presidency. Of France. Unfortunately.

Did Chris Christie make a joke about blow jobs at the expense of a heckler at a Mitt Romney event on Sunday night?

Responding to a shouted comment – it's unclear what was said – Christie responded:

You know, something may be going down tonight, but it ain't going to be jobs, sweetheart.

Charming. Especially coming from a man who can't even see his own ... but that would be sinking to his level.

After Mitt Romney avoided answering questions from journalists for more than a week, nothing spells "press conference now!" than the need to explain some cack-handed remarks about pink slips and the joy of firing.

And so Romney sought to explain the remarks he's made in the last two days. First up was the "I like being able to fire people" gaffe today (via AP):

Things can always be taken out of context, and I understand that's what the Obama people will do. But as you know I was speaking about insurance companies and we need to be able to make a choice and my comments entirely reflected that discussion.

Nice try. On his cryptic "I was worried I was going to get pink-slipped" remark:

I came out of school, and I got an entry level position like the other people that were freshly minted MBAs, and like anybody that starts at the bottom of an enterprise you wonder, when you don't do so well, whether you're going to be able to hang onto your job.

Ah, that was in 1975, 36 years ago. By 1977 he had been poached by Bain & Company, so his "entry level position" as a management consultant didn't last long, and presumably his fear of the pink slip didn't last any longer.

As the final day of campaigning in New Hampshire turns into the final night of campaigning, here's a summary of today's events inside and outside of the Granite State.

• Mitt Romney remained in a comfortable lead according to the last batch of opinion polls on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, with double digit leads suggesting he will easily win the contest – with only his margin of victory being in question

• Romney's remark "I like being able to fire people" this morning was seized on by his political rivals in both the Republican and Democratic parties, with Romney under heavy fire for his record as a corporate raider as head of Bain Capital. The Romney campaign dismissed the remark as being taken out of context

• Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry issued hard-hitting attacks on Romney's record at Bain Consulting, with Gingrich-supporting Super Pac preparing to release a documentary highlighting Romney's role in downsizing

• Huntsman's campaign showed a late surge in the last polls, challenging Ron Paul for second place but with both candidates well behind Romney

• Ron Paul attracted outsized crowds during campaign stops, surronded by a scrum of journalists reflecting his campaign's new-found credibility based on its poll ratings

• Todd Palin, husband of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, publically endorsed Gingrich – suggesting that an endorsement by Palin herself was not far behind

• Barack Obama announced that Bill Daley, the White House chief of staff for the past year, was stepping down, to be replaced by budget director Jack Lew

We'll be back tomorrow, live blogging polling day in the New Hampshire primary and the results themselves.

Polling takes place between 6am and 8pm ET, although most polling stations in New Hampshire close at 7pm, when the first vote counts will begin. Although we will know the top-line result – Romney's expected victory – very quickly, the final details of percentages and second places will take a little longer.