I think Romney is in for a disappointing night. The latest polls have him leading Michigan by 3-5%, but the polls are focused on registered republicans and GOP leaning independents. While I don't think there will be a flood of voters from the DEM side, there might just be enough to get the win for McCain. The worst possible situation for Romney was a non-competitive DEM ballot. This is a nightmare for him.
Wow! Even with the extra indie support from the DEM side, McCain got slaughtered. If DEMs woulda been voting Romney might have taken it by closer to 12%. Looks like my delegate predictions were spot on. There are still 8 delegates to be assigned, but they should come in mostly for Romney and a couple for McCain. I had Huck getting 4, but he will probably only get 2 as he barely made it above the 15% cutoff.
All streaks were preserved in the Michigan race. -- even amongst non-supporters, Romney was viewed as best candidate to save the economy. -- McCain got an overwhelming amount of the DEM and Indie vote. He is living proof that the line between GOP and DEM is getting ever thinner. -- Huckabee still got an amazingly disproportionate amount of the evangelical vote.
I would comment on the DEM race, but there isn't much to say unless Clinton starts spouting off about her amazing 55% of the vote. Nevada is a much bigger deal for them so I will save comment for that time.
Wow! Looks like I underestimated the breadth of Romney support throughout the state. The above prediction counted on more support for Mac in the upper western districts, allowing him to get a few delegates there. As it runed out, almost every district was overwhelmingly for Mitt causing a landslide in delegates to him. Romney -- 24 McCain -- 5 Huckabee -- 1
Current counts are as follows. Republican Romney --- 53% with 54 delegates Huckabee --- 22% ; 22 McCain --- 15% ; 15 Thompson --- 6% ; 6 Paul --- 2% ; 2 Guliani --- 1% ; 1 Hunter --- 1% ; 1 I think it is becoming obvious who the current front-runner is on the GOP side, but Mitt has a big job to accomplish. He only lacks on national polls because he was thought to be less electable than Giuliani. He has to now convince people that he is electable. It seems that many GOP voters aren't so much concerned with who the GOP nominee is, but rather who can ensure victory against the DEMs. Democrats OTOH, aren't concerned about electability at all. No matter how they look at it, neither of the top candidates is ideal on the grounds of electability. It's hard to say between a black man and a white woman, who is hurt more by prejudice. Hence, an extreme focus on personality in the democrat campaigns. Between the two of them they don't have a single day of either chief executive or foreign relations experience. There are reasons that presidents with gubernatorial experience outnumber senate-only presidents by more than 2:1, and only 2 active US senators have ever been elected president. DEMs have put themselves in a tough spot this year by running all senators and relying only on Hillary's experience by association.
Well the Nevada caucus on the DEM side gave us a few interesting things to look at. Hillary wins with a 6% margin and ends up getting the same number of delegates as Obama. Isn't this system great?! There were a few interesting insights provided by the entrance polls. Hillary has officially been able to connect with the female voters so that they are at least not against her. She got 51% of the female vote which was reflective of her also getting 51% of the overall vote. SO at least women aren't voting against her. Also interesting is the nice gradient we see be age. The older the voters get, the more likely they are to vote Hillary. The younger they are, the more likely they are to vote Obama. Democrat college students are in heaven these days. They either have our first woman or first black man as a nominee. Either way they have a cause to get behind. Obama won a landslide 80% of the black vote. Identity politics at its best. Unfortunately for him that won't win him either the nomination or the election. The black vote doesn't amount to nearly enough as this country is only 12% African American. Hillary scored points on every front in terms of electability, experience, etc. Obama only came out ahead on the subject of change. Current Delegate counts are as follows. Hillary -- 54% with 210 delegates Obama -- 32% ; 123 Edwards -- 14% ; 52 It gets a bit more interesting if we only count delegates that were actually won by voting rather than alliances formed before the primaries. Obama -- 44 Hillary -- 43 Edwards -- 21
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QXBNl7RlwfQ&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QXBNl7RlwfQ&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
On the GOP side things came out pretty much as expected although I had thought that Huckabee would barely pull off a win in SC. I sure Mitt had hoped the battle between Huck and Mac in SC was a little closer, causing a few more delegates to go Huck's way. In any case, the SC polls were pretty much spot on. Must be quite disappointing for Huckabee though. He was supposed to have this populist movement going for him and was supposed to gain a ton of momentum coming out of SC. In the end he only ended up getting 5 delegates. Both Mitt and Mac have exceeded my expectations thus far. I expected Rudy to put a better fight in Nevada, but it seems he is in free-fall and he isn't even polling ahead in Florida anymore. I thought evangelicals would carry Huck to a win in SC. Interesting things taken from Nevada entrance polls. - Huck still carried an amazingly disproportionate number of evangelicals. - Mac carried a good chunk of the Latino vote, most likely because of his favorable stance toward amnesty. The interesting thing here though, is that Romney has a very different and opposing stance on amnesty but still won a huge majority of the Latino vote. - Talk about identity politics. Romney got 95% of the Mormon vote. Lucky for him, Mormons represent a larger voting group in Nevada than any other religion. Some things to see from South Carolina. - Mac got the older voters, while Huck got the younger ones. - Huck didn't do as well amongst southern evangelicals as had been expected. - African Americans only made up 2% of GOP vote even though the state is 30% black. Current GOP delegate counts Romeny -- 46% ; 72 delegates McCain -- 25% ; 38 Huckabee -- 19% ; 29 Thompson - 5% ; 8 Paul -- 4% ; 6 Giuliani -- 1% ; 2
Hmm - maybe a McCain-Huckabee ticket. McCain delivers the indepdendents, and Huckabee strengthens the religious right part of the ticket. . Romney is distorted by having banked Nevada, a near-Utah state with many mormons... There aren't many of those left. Thompson and Guiliani look like toast...