Iowa has spoken.

New Hampshire doesn’t care.

What did Iowa mean? I asked Bob Leavitt, a small business owner in Atkinson, and his wife Erin, at a Chris Christie event on Tuesday at St. Anselm College, where their daughter is a student. Bob interrupted, saying “I don’t care about Iowa. It means nothing to me.”

So what is Bob thinking? “I was leaning strongly Trump until his latest antics.”

I asked “What antics?” (There have been so many.)

“Ducking the Fox debate last week. He can’t see beyond his petty little tiff with Roger Ailes, president of Fox, over Megyn Kelley.”

He continued, “I like what I just saw and heard. We’d go for Christie if we thought he had a chance. Why hasn’t he gained traction. Is it the Bridgegate affair?”

Bob and Erin are leaning Rubio at this point. They’re not decided. They are still evaluating the candidates – now excepting Trump − with just five days to go. So are many New Hampshire voters.

In Iowa, Ted Cruz won. Donald Trump, the guy who always wins, came in second. Whoops.

But is Trump out of it? The very next day after Iowa, he drew a throng of 5,000 enthusiasts to a rally in Milford, N.H. where he received the endorsement of former U.S. Senator Scott Brown. The Iowa winner, Ted Cruz, drew 100 to a town hall meeting at the Crossing Life Church in Windham.

On Monday at a Jeb Bush event, former U.S. Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who has endorsed Jeb, told me, “Don’t pay too much attention to the polls. New Hampshire voters don’t make their minds up until the final days. We make our decisions carefully and deliberately. Don’t be surprised if Rubio, Kasich or Bush makes a great run down the homestretch in this primary.”

Gregg’s cautionary assessment of who might win is especially relevant because, while Trump leads in the polls, the next four candidates — Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Bush — are bunched between 9.3 percent to 11.8 percent support in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Trump’s lead is not assured, and second place is anyone’s guess, with Iowa having little impact.

But did Iowa have any influence upon New Hampshire and the rest of the race? Was Iowa a pointless exercise? Ask Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. Iowa may not have picked the winner. It may not have influenced the thinking of the ruggedly independent-minded New Hampshire voter. But it picked the losers and eliminated them. That’s what the early primaries do.

If this is the case, do the voters look at the candidates with an explicit eye to their viability – in order to avoid throwing their votes away on someone who has no chance? Tom Harkins, a financial advisor in Derry, does. At the Cruz event in Windham, he told me he’s leaning Cruz, with Trump his second choice. He might prefer Christie, “if he were electable.”

He has the same worry about Christie’s viability as Bob and Erin Leavitt.

And the issue of viability brings up the other thing that happened on Monday while Iowans were caucusing. All the campaigns had to file their fundraising reports for the fourth quarter of last year.

The key number is cash on hand on Dec. 31. Here’s the ranking for candidates who have reasonable poll numbers in the Granite State:

1. Trump – as a billionaire self-funder, he ranks first.

2. Cruz – $18.7 million

3. Rubio – $14.4 million

4. Bush – $7.6 million

5. Kasich – $2.6 million

6. Christie – $1.1 million

In addition to being on the bottom rungs of the money rankings, John Kasich and Chris Christie are one-trick ponies. They’ve bet the ranch on New Hampshire. They’ve lived in the Granite State for the past six months, logging more events than any other candidate, Kasich 180 and Christie 176. Time in the Granite State is not the question. The issue is time not spent elsewhere.

How can they be prepared for the rush of primaries after New Hampshire? South Carolina follows in just 11 days (the 20th), Nevada in 14 (the 23rd), and the 10 states in the SEC primary in just three weeks (March 1st). They’ve barely set foot in these states.

For Kasich and Christie, it would appear that winning New Hampshire might be their worst nightmare.

But do the voters see this apparent reality? Leavitt and Harkins do. After a Christie event on Wednesday evening at the Milford Fire Department, I asked a few of the 75 or so in attendance.

Tim Allen of Merrimack, an owner-operator of three restaurants, said emphatically that he doesn’t pay attention to the polls and has no idea how much money the candidates have. He decides based solely upon who they are and what they stand for.

Ken Barlotta of Bedford had already voted by absentee ballot. Does he assess candidates’ viability? Not really, but after a moment’s reflection, he said “they have to be within spitting distance.”

Kasich and Christie, both on the bubble, have to worry about the viability factor. Clearly, not everyone will make it out of New Hampshire to fight another day.

The early primaries are spotty in identifying the ultimate winner, but they are harsh and inexorable in winnowing the field.

Red Jahncke (RTJahncke@Gmail; Twitter: @RedJahncke), an occassional contributor, will be providing dispatches for theday.com from New Hampshire this week leading up to Tuesday’s first in the nation primary. Jahncke is president of The Townsend Group, LLC, a business consulting firm.