After Florida: GOP Super Duper Tuesday

My, how much can change in two weeks. We ventured forth, after New Hampshire, to analyze the Super Duper Tuesday landscape on February 5, but--as we expected--much of our prognostication needs revision in light of interim developments.

Just two weeks ago, it was at least possible that Fred Thompson would win SC and Giuliani would win Florida, developments that would have virtually guaranteed a deadlocked GOP convention. Thompson was a longer shot, but we thought Rudy G. would at least make it interesting in Florida. Now both are gone, with Rudy endorsing John McCain and Thompson probably hoping his buddy McCain is the nominee.

Clearly, McCain in now the front runner. Some Romney folks will complain, but crowning Senator McCain as the leader is fair at this point.

The Straight Talker hasn't yet wrapped it up, however, and there's still a couple scenarios where he could be denied the nomination, or have to wheel and deal--probably with Huckabee--to get it.

With that in mind, let's re-examine the Super Duper Tuesday landscape. To re-cap, Republicans in 21 states will select roughly half of all delegates to the national convention on February 5. Some states will conduct winner-take-all primaries, others will have closed caucuses, and many will do something in between.

Let's start with the easy calls (numbers in parentheses are total delegates for a state): Romney will win Massachusetts and Utah. The bad news is that Massachusetts (43) awards its delegates proportionally--so he won't get all of them. The good news is that Utah (36) is winner-take-all.

Huckabee will win Arkansas (34), which is a modified winner-take-all. He should get most of those delegates under that system.

McCain will win Arizona (53), which is winner-take-all.

Now for the next tier--states with decent polling info or other indications of how it is likely to go.

McCain looks strong in the East Coast blue states where Giuliani had been the favorite. All of these are winner-take-all, meaning he can clean up and there is no incentive for Romney to waste money fighting for them. Those states (winner-take-all, unless otherwise noted) are: New York (101), New Jersey (52), Connecticut (30) (Lieberman is a big help here), and Delaware (18). The fact that McCain can pick-up 201 delegates in these states, plus 53 in Arizona, all without doing much work or spending any money virtually assures that he will come out of Super-Duper Tuesday with the most delegates and hence retain the front-runner title.

McCain also should do well in two other blue states: Illinois (70) and California (173). Neither is winner-take-all, but in California McCain can take all delegates in any congressional district he wins, even by a plurality, plus the state's at-large delegates. At a minimum, we'd expect McCain to take well over 50% of the delegates in both these states. And for media purposes he'll be declared the "winner" of both based on the total vote count.

Huckabee has a good chance to do well in Georgia (72) and Alabama (48), both of which are winner-take-all at the congressional district level. He won't get every delegate, but he'll get most.

After that, Huckabee has a shot at Missouri (58), Oklahoma (41), and West Virginia (30). He also has a shot at Tennessee (55), but may be hurt by voters who pull the lever for Fred Thompson notwithstanding the Fredster's having dropped out. He could also be hurt in West Virginia by an unusual set of caucus rules that require a series of run-offs for an ultimate winner-take-all (Romney could win under that rule). We can't see the Huckster winning anything else, however.

Romney needs to pick his shot and hope that between himself and Huckabee, they can keep McCain's delegate count down. Romney has a shot in red state caucuses in Alaska (29), Colorado (46), Montana (25), North Dakota (26) and maybe West Virginia (30). They're all caucus states, so independents are out and conservatives are in. Montana has a large Mormon population that will help. West Virginia has a winnowing process that could favor Romney.

Minnesota (41) also has a caucus, so that might help out Romney, but we wouldn't put Minnesota out of reach of McCain.

The problem with caucus states is they tend to be more proportional in awarding delegates, so while Romney could "win" a bunch of these states, he'll probably have to share some delegates with both McCain and Huckabee.

By the same token, Romney should be able to pick up some delegates in Illinois and California. It may also be worth it for him (and McCain) to contest Missouri, which is winner-take-all and has 58 delegates. Indeed, Missouri may be the one truly hot contest on February 5!

We've now handicapped all the states, but we'll add one more caveat: McCain has momentum and will be the lead story in the news for the next week. That means he could easily do better than we forecast here--for example, he could take Oklahoma, Colorado, Alaska and a few other states where no one has a really clear advantage.

The biggest risk to Romney is that he loses out to Huckabee, either in "wins" (i.e., states where he gets the most votes), or in delegates. The biggest risk to McCain is that he only wins "blue" states, leading Republicans in the remaining contests to doubt his credentials (but maybe leading them to believe he can win in November).

Finally, here's how we see the candidates coming out in terms of a delegate range on Feb. 5. There are 1081 delegates at stake, although some won't actually be awarded until later in the process. Of those, we'd expect McCain to get between 300-600; Huckabee should get between 170-350; and Romney would range from 200-350.

Those numbers don't look terrific for Romney, especially if Huckabee is angling for the Veep nod with McCain, as many speculate (and which would be a very wise move on McCain's part--at least today; but the political landscape, as we've seen, is ever-shifting, so McCain can and should wait).

We'll keep an eye on the polls and pundits between now and Super Duper Tuesday and let you know if things change. If they do, it's most likely to be in the direction of McCain, unless he does something really dumb in the next few days.

Later tonight, or tomorrow, we'll do a post on what Edwards' dropping out means on the Democratic side, along with how Democrats should calculate McCain as their likely opponent.