Marcus Yam for The New York Times

MANCHESTER, N.H. — “This is like being in New Orleans at Mardi Gras!” Newt Gingrich called out from one of his most intense crowds of the week. But it was not a crush of voters. As he dropped by a polling place at a school just a few blocks from downtown Manchester, he was pounced on by scores of journalists Tuesday morning.

From New Hampshire Reporting on the candidates and voters from the Granite State.

Intent on shaking the hands of voters, Mr. Gingrich and his wife, Callista, were tightly enclosed in a slowly moving bubble formed by his security team and, at one point, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, who locked hands with the agents.

“Be careful, sir,” said a security man as the scrum crab-walked its way up a small hill, where many candidates’ supporters waved signs and where supporters of President Obama attempted to drown them out with chants of “Four more years!”

Reporters from foreign countries fired questions, which Mr. Gingrich mostly ignored.

“How can you stay viable?”

“What do you think about the importance of the Latino vote?”

“How would your presidency treat Canada?”

“I’m not here to talk to you,” Mr. Gingrich jauntily told journalists. “I’m here to talk to the voters.”

But a question about Mitt Romney did elicit a response. Asked what he thought of Mr. Romney’s statement that he likes to “fire people,” Mr. Gingrich at first defended him. “What he meant to say is he likes to have the right to choose which companies he gets services from, and he was misquoted,” he said.

But Mr. Gingrich didn’t leave it at that. “It has to make a Republican voter ask the question, If a guy misstates himself that badly and that destructively, do you really want him on the platform with Barack Obama?

“Everybody, there’s a step here,” Mr. Gingrich said as he stepped off a curb. “I don’t want to lose any reporters, cameramen.”

He was asked how he felt about his chances in New Hampshire, where latest polls show him in the bottom of the field.

“I think we’ll have a good result, and we’ll go on to South Carolina late this evening,” he said. “I think we have a very good chance to win South Carolina as the issues become clearer.”

In that Southern state next door to his former base in Georgia, and which he has called a must-win, Mr. Gingrich indicated he would continue to draw a sharp contrast between himself as a “Reagan conservative” and Mr. Romney as a “Massachusetts moderate,” which he hoped would resonate with South Carolina’s conservative voters.

He has also signaled in recent days that he would attack Mr. Romney’s record on gun rights. Mr. Gingrich reiterated here that he thought Mr. Romney’s support of gun control and of raising taxes on guns would be an issue in South Carolina.

“Back it up! Back it up!” a security man said as Mr. Gingrich neared his bus.

A voter thrust his hand through the scrum, and Mr. Gingrich reached for it. “A genuine real-live voter,” he exclaimed.

He pronounced the jostling knot of journalists one of the largest he had seen. “Isn’t this crazy?” he said.