The polls are open across New Hampshire for the first presidential primary of the 2012 election. Republicans in the historic village of Dixville Notch have already voted, putting Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman in first place, with two votes apiece. Romney is hoping for a big win tonight, telling a crowd he can't take more results like Iowa.

If Mitt Romney can hold on for a victory in New Hampshire, he will have history on his side: in every contested Republican primary season since 1980, no candidate has won the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. And while Romney may not have a hometown advantage, his reputation as former governor of neighboring Massachusetts has in part helped propel him to the top of many pre-primary polls. But polls and actual votes — as evidenced by his eight-vote caucus victory — are very different things.

According to a Gallup Poll released Monday, 40 percent of American voters identified themselves as poltically independent in 2011. This is the highest yearly yield in the poll's history. But whether independents get burned out after their favorite spitfire candidate doesn't make it past the primaries or if they successfully push mainstream candidates towards the fringe in 2012 is still unclear.

An estimated 10,000 people participated in the first day of an indefinite strike against the government on Monday. These protests were motivated by alleged corruption and the elimination of a subsidy that has sent fuel prices skyrocketing in Nigeria. Meanwhile, terrorist attacks by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, who most recently claimed responsibility for a Christmas Day church bombing that killed 37 people and wounded 57, have reached a fever pitch.

After only one year in the job, Bill Daley, President Obama's chief of staff, is stepping down. Current budget director Jacob Lew will assume this post. Daley, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and U.S. Commerce secretary, had publicly announced his frustration with Beltway politics and intentions to leave in October of last year.

As a result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, rules regarding corporate and union campaign spending were significantly eased. Super PAC ads are more strongly-worded and less accurate, largely because the third party groups funding them are harder to track down than something funded directly by a candidate's campaign. Though they are not limited to one party by nature, their role in the Republican race has been striking: ads run by pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC "Restore Our Future" are widely credited with reversing Newt Gingrich's lead in Iowa.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad remains defiant refusing to step down amid anti-government violence. He appeared on state television this morning. The UN estimates as many as 5,000 people have been killed since the uprising began last year.

The University of New Hampshire Survey Center estimates that 56 percent of the people voting in the Republican primary will be registered Republicans. This means that 44 percent of voters who will participate in Tuesday's primary are undeclared, a noticeable increase from 2008's primary. The same poll also found that Mitt Romney has a slight lead among both groups. To figure out what's been persuading voters either way, The Takeaway speaks with three New Hampshire conservatives.

Though Republicans and Unionists share power in Northern Ireland, plenty of raw — albeit buried — political and sectarian divisions still remain. A large part of maintaining peace has been keeping the past in the past, which is why when former members of the IRA and loyalist paramilitary groups told their stories for an academic archive to be stored in the US, they were assured that their testimonies would remain secret until they died. On Monday however, a federal judge in Boston decided that some of the tapes and transcripts should be handed over to the police in Northern Ireland who are investigating the abduction and murder of Jean McConville by the IRA in 1972. 

While the most recent leg of the 2012 GOP campaign trail has been marked by eight vote leads, libertarian bluster, and plays to religion, it can also be defined by a lack of one key political ingredient: humor. The seriousness of all the candidates thus far has left voters on both sides of the aisle yearning for effortlessly funny former frontrunners like Bob Dole and John McCain. And, as Pete Dominick, comedian and CNN contributor has noted, boring politics makes for bad politics.

Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley have been outspoken critics of income inequality in America. The late aughts were shaped by the subprime mortgage crisis, subsequent stock market crash, international debt problems, and record levels of long-term unemployment. Between 2006 and 2010, there was a 27 percent increase of people living in poverty across the U.S. And despite signs of recovery, growth has been slow and decidedly uneven with Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and California hovering at 12 percent or higher unemployment rates.