As of 11:30 pm we have a pretty good take on Super Tuesday as we wait for California, which will take awhile since the exit polls make it too close to call on either side.As we said earlier, McCain had--as expected--a big day. The Straight Talker clearly benefitted from winner-take-all rules in Connecticut, NY, NJ and Delaware. He also picked up Oklahoma by having Huckabee and Romney evenly divide the anti-McCain vote there, and he's likely to pick up Missouri, albeit by a hair, over Huckabee, again because the Huckster and the Mittster cut up the anti-McCain vote. If McCain also wins California, then he's the prohibitive favorite, especially since Romney hardly finished off Huckabee tonight.
That said, McCain did not get as big a victory as some predicted for him--he's going to lose a good 10 states or more, so there's still room for the anti-McCain movement if they can only get anyone to listen to them.
Huckabee had a pretty good night, too, proving that he's "not dead yet." Over the weekend, when polls showed McCain leading in Georgia and Alabama, we thought the Huckster might be finished. But by winning Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, West Virginia, and Tennessee Huck has shown just enough strength to slog on, but not enough to win. If he's angling for the Veep slot, he helped himself a lot tonight. Missouri is still too close to call, but we think McCain will eke it out (based on exit polls and word that St. Louis County is late with its results). We were pretty accurate in our pre-Super Tuesday forecast for Huckabee. It's too bad for him that he couldn't quite take Oklahoma, however.
Romney, of course, won Massachusetts (although not by that much!) and Utah. As we predicted, he's also doing well in the caucus states (except West Virginia, where an unusual voting process did him in--he was the leader on the first ballot). Romney won the North Dakota caucus and looks likely to win in Colorado and Minnesota, and perhaps he'll pick up Alaska, too. (Hawaiians have been caucusing for two weeks now--who knows what's up there.) The caucuses tend to be dominated by the more conservative Republicans who actually listen to Rush Limbaugh, so Romney has an advantage there.
The real irony is that if the GOP had proportional selection of delegates like the Democrats, McCain would have a much smaller delegate lead at this point--one that could be overcome.
As we said earlier tonight, the Limbaugh/Coulter/Buchanan et al. anti-McCain radio-fest is also a clear loser, as voters ignored their contentiona that vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain. As we noted, evangelicals are not nearly as likely to be influenced by the crass likes of these bomb throwers, and in any event, they remain highly suspicious of Romney the Mormon.
On the Democratic side, Obama can say he took more states, doing well in the Red states. But Hillary should come out of the night with more delegates, and by drubbing Obama in Massachusetts, she should get some bragging rights. Still, California is a big prize and could tip the spin room scale to either candidate come tomorrow morning. Moreover, Missouri, where Hillary at one point had a big lead, is sliding steadily towards Obama; if he wins there it will certainly take the sting out of Massachusetts.
8 comments:
"As we said earlier tonight, the Limbaugh/Coulter/Buchanan et al. anti-McCain radio-fest is also a clear loser, as voters ignored their contentiona that vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain."
X, I agree and disagree - moderates and conservative Republicans are voting for Huckabee and have ignored their request. Personally I don't quite understand why they think Romney is more "conservative" because he was identified early on as a moderate. Romney lost that identification when he lost Iowa to Huckabee then NH to McCain and was forced to turn to the hard right for votes.
Where I disagree with you is that many who would typically vote Republican, may in fact going to these primaries voting for Obama. Look at the more red state victories Obama has obtained. Clinton has dominated in all your normal blue states but not quite well in red or purple.
Moderate and conservatives are crossing the line to Obama because of two reasons. (1) A general election of any GOP versus Obama, is always better than any GOP versus Clinton, and (2) conservatives and Republicans similar to liberals and Democrat, want change and are opposed to more of the same political establishment running this nation. Obama appears to be trying to reach across political lines for those disenchanted Bush voters. This effort will not only net a "change" for disenchanted Bush Repulicans, but it also avoids handing the Democratic nomination to the Clinton's and possibly the easy defeat of any GOP'er for the White House.
Why do Republican voters distaste the Clinton's, when they gave us a good economy and times were fairly peaceful? Republicans view economic success as a credit to the Republican-led Congress in the 90's and tax cuts for working-class people. Economic recession is more associated with Presidents however, aka Hoover, Carter, and now Bush. Many believe that whatever level of recession or slowdown we have, the nation's productivity will be tempered more for a longer period and not simply rebound quickly as before.
90's were peaceful yes, but foreign policy complacency and a downsizing of the CIA and military is what many Republican conservatives blame Clinton for which led to 9/11 and increased int'l terrorism. McCain was there in the Senate when all this happened.
Republicans also see the Clintons are very divisive, and that's where I see the element of change (against the established GOP), the disenchanted Bush voters and many Democratic voters have in common.
If all this is true, many former Bush-voters will come out and vote Democratic in the upcoming primaries, in an effort to help Obama win the nomination over Clinton. This will further slant voter participation in the upcoming primaries to the left. If this happens and Obama wins the nomination, Obama will have the ears of both the left and the right, and can easliy win the general election over a McCain-Lieberman (or similar) ticket.
Interesting insight, Flood. You could be right, although we haven't seen a whole lot of evidence of Republicans crossing over to the Dems. Where you are no doubt correct, however, is that many independents who voted for Bush are disillusioned and may be voting in the Democratic contests for Obama--not to make the Democrats weaker, but because they genuinely like his message.
We certainly agree with you that Romney never established genuine conservative credentials and so many voters are wary of him. Indeed, the attack on Huckabee as a "liberal" is and has been a bunch of nonsense, especially as compared to Romney.
Two thoughts:
First, for evidence that Republicans are switching over to vote Obama, just consider states like Idaho and Utah that had a massive dem turn out (comparatively) for Obama. We have in laws in Idaho and they and all of their friends - all of whom are traditionally Republican, mind - went out and cast their vote for Obama. Why? Because Obama had headquarters in their states, which none of the other candidates did.
Also, interesting note - I did some analysis of the GOP results. If you tally the results similar to how the Dems do them (all proportional, with 15% cut-off for viability), Romney actually leads McCain in the popular vote (528 for Romney vs. 489 for McCain, and the Huckster at a measly 212). What does this tell us? 1) That the typical GOP base is behind Romney, and 2) that Romney's go-for-delegates-not-states approach failed.
I want to do some more analyses (I am a crunching-numbers person), but somthing else that stood out to me is that in states where there are a substantial proportion of LDS/Mormon individuals, Romney did very well. It was in states where there aren't as many that he came in 2nd or (in the South) 3rd. What does this say to me? I don't think it means that he only got the LDS/Mormon vote, b/c places like Nevada, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, etc. by no means have a majority of LDS voters. Instead, I think it speaks to the idea that Romney is actual hurt by his religion. In areas where Mormons are respected and known, he did well. In places were teh religion is unknown or misunderstood (South) he did terrible.
Thanks Katie--we like crunching numbers, too. We're about to do a post on how the GOP nominating process may have elevated McCain, so we'll borrow your numbers, which make a real point.
One of the reasons we've been leaning toward Obama--we'll have to make up our mind in the next week--is precisely his broad appeal. We're glad to hear that Republicans are finding him attractive (we're sure it's not just because he has offices in the red states).
It's not just Romney's religion that's hurting him in the South. It's the fact that his social-conservative positions are all very recent. I've talked to plenty of folks (one side of my family is Southern religious conservatives) who could care less whether he is a Mormon, but who simply think he is a phony. They tend to like Huckabee as genuine, and also like the Huckster's compassion for the little people.
Thats some good points about the "caring for the little guy" factor - they talk about that alot on CNN, on how sincere Huck comes off. To be honest, he comes off as slimy to me, Mitt comes off as too business-man and stand-offish, and McCain comes off as war-mongering. But, thats just our opinion here in PA!
Some more statistics for you, if you are interested, based on the reanalysis with Dem rules:
McCain: 489 delegates (39%), 12 first-place wins, 4 from "red" states, 7 from "blue" states and 1 from "purple states
Huckabee: 212 delegates (17%), 6 first-place wins, 5 blue states, 1 purple state
Romney: 528 delegates (42%), 11 states, 6 red states, 5 blue states, 0 purple states
Numbers are for all states who have voted so far, and red/blue/purple refer to 2004 designations.
Sorry, Huckabee should be 5 red states, 1 purple state.
Thanks for the correction--you had us worried! We just posted a new piece with some of your data.
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