Florida - The Republican Showdown

9.47 I'll say it again, at risk of looking like an idiot, but the Republican race is very close to being over. If you take a look at the recent opinion poll leads McCain has in California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois - the big Super Tuesday states - you'll see it will take a miracle now for Romney to overcome them.  Those states alone would give McCain almost half the haul in delegates he now needs to win the nomination. And in most of those states his nearest challenger was Rudy Guliani who is about to quit and ask his supporters to back McCain.   We have witnessed the most consequential might of the election so far. The only real question is whether the conservative base of the Republican party and its leadership can come to terms with this or whether it wants to doom the party by conducting guerrilla warfare against the man who is now almost certainly to be the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

9.20 Who'd have thought it? as someone once said. Or, as somebody else once said: Nobody knows anything. We were all convinced a couple of weeks ago that, while the Democratic race would probably be over quite quickly, the Republican race would go on and on. We'd get to Super Tuesday with a multi-sided Republican fight and one clear leader on the Dem side. Well, guess what?  It now looks like McCain has become the firm favourite for the Republican nomination, and Super Tuesday could more or less wrap it up for him (the Republicans, remember, allocate delegates on a  winner-take-all basis in each state: so McCain could win by 1 vote in all 21 states next week and take all the delegates). Meanwhile the Dem race (where delegates are awarded proportionately) is less predictable than ever.  Funny Old World.

9.11 McCain wins.  Fox and AP call it. Romney has now lost four of the first five seriously contested major primaries - Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida. He's not out; he has the money to keep going through Super Tuesday. But can someone possibly win from that kind of start?  Various reports that Giuliani may drop out and endorse McCain, perhaps tomorrow.

9.07pm I should clarify my earlier post on statewide uniform voting. I don't mean, obviously, that all counties vote in the same proportions. That's emprically false. I simply mean that there's very little observed change in proportions of the total vote after, say 25 per cent of the vote is in, and after 100 per cent is in. And I'm not really sure why.

9pm If McCain does win, by the way, pencil in Florida Gov Charlie Crist as a future Republican nominee for the presidency.  He is already wildly popular in his state and he can quite plausibly claim to have delivered Florida if McCain wins. He took a gamble - Romney might have won (might still, of course) - and it would have damaged Crist with the party's potential nominee, as well as taking some of the shine off the governor's pristine reputation. But the ways things are right now, it looks like it paid off.

8.52pm McCain looks to be holding on to his small but significant lead.  It's interesting, isn't it, for the staistically wonkish among us, that in every primary this year the proportions of the votes for each candiate after about 25 per cent of the total vote has been declared have stayed pretty steady. This despite the pundits insisting that Candidate X's strength lies in Such and Such a County and we need to wait until we see the resultss from the panhandle or the frozen north or the rural areas or whatever. The reality seems to be that the voters show remarkably uniform patterns across each state.

8.49pm Hillary's dishonesty is quite breathtaking. Claiming victory in an election you've agreed doesn't count must represent some new low in the Clintons' long descent from decency. But you've got to admire Fox News. They took a commercial break in the middle of her "victory" speech.

8.15pm Notwithstanding the title of this thread, a word on the Democrats.  Hillary has won, though as everybody quickly points out there are (at present) no delegates to be won. The Clintons will still spin this as a show of strength in the largest state to vote to date but two things should be said:

1 Hillary should be the default winner in a race with no campaigning. She was the bigger name and as the Obama campaign have pointed out is closer to being a sort of incumbent so she ought to win.

2 The exit poll says Democrats who made up their minds in the last week actually split, or perhaps even opted narrowly for Obama. Hillary won big among those who made up their mind earlier especially those who voted absentee. That may be very significant and suggest that the whole Bill-Hillary flap plus Kennedys (pace my observations last night) might have been important in shifting voters away from the Clintons.

7.53 Eastern Time Here we go again. Another thrilling night in prospect as Florida looks like an absolute cliffhanger between Romney and McCain. And no hanging chads to ruin it this time. The only clear thing so far is that Giuliani's a goner. Huckabee confirms he can't win and it's a two-horse race on Super Tuesday . But who has the edge going into next week? We'll know in a couple of hours.

Comments

[matty]

"Claiming victory in an election you've agreed doesn't count must represent some new low in the Clintons' long descent from decency"

Hellary is pathetic. Come on BARACK! In fact he did well in FLA considering he did not bother at all there.

[Tom Key]

With regard to the trend appearing to be uniform, this is a result of the fact that results in each county are reported as they come in, rather than held to be announced all at once (this only happens when there is a malfunction in the tabulating machines). This is particularly true in states with liberal absentee/early voting rules, where as many as 1/3 of the ballots will be counted, and those results posted, within mintues of the polls closing. In these states, you get a pretty clear snapshot because the vast majority of early votes will be tabulated and reported within a half hour. The only geographic trend in the votes that you saw tonight was when the absentee votes from the Panhandle (which is in a later timezone) came in, and gave Romney his last surge, but that had less to do with geography, and more to do with the fact that Romney did better with early ballots than he did with ballots cast on election day.

[BJ]

The clintons are still at their dirty politics /trickery. Trying to get into Obama's head. They can't stand the fact that there is an African American who is as smart (if not SMARTER)as they are is threatening their little "spotlight world." The world has been exposed to them- thanks to Dick Morris/research. They need to be aware that God sits high/looks below! Dig one ditch; better dig another one. I feel sorry for their minds/souls. They really believe that they are entitled!!!!

[BJ]

Poor Hillary.She will do whatever it takes to put Bill back into the "House, and herself in the Spotlight." WhenI see the clintons; I'm reminded of people who have "matured" (age-wise) and do not want to accept it. I think the Clintons are threatened by Barack. Instead of taking their medicine, they choose to destroy him. They expose a mentality of people in the 60's when they thought integration would destroy their pure white worlds! I wish they would let the people decide. All the mud slinging has made people lose respect for them! It has for me.