Are the Super Tuesday states representative of the nation?
If so, then Republican voters are largely for McCain and Democratic voters are narrowly for Clinton.
Looking at the delegate totals thus far here, I’m making my amateur conclusions. The delegate totals tell the same story as the Super Tuesday totals. Although nobody has nearly enough delegates to close the book,
Romney had what can only be described as a horrible night. He was hammered in states with large delegate counts, to the consternation of those who consider themselves conservative. Is this a conservative backlash? Maybe the dittoheads are dittoing less, but there is also a rising concern about the economy. Huckabee’s presence cannot be denied as a factor; he was a popular alternative in the south where Romney might have otherwise made traction in places with weak McCain support.
The McCain momentum was enough to convince him to come out and declare victory fairly early in the night, but not before Huckabee had already made his own delusional announcement that it was a two-man race, and he was in it. That’s an interesting conclusion to reach from third place in the delegate count. Maybe he was talking about the race to lose to McCain? Or maybe he thinks that he can attract last minute support away from Romney and make more out if it, since he’s spent far less money than Mitt up to this point to better effect.
On the Democratic side, Clinton continues to have the lead in delegates, but without a spoiler there is still a lot of work for her to shake Obama’s rising popularity. However, Karl Rove (of all people) had an interesting observation. A lot of Obama’s Super Tuesday support is coming from states which are not expected to be carried by the Democratic candidate in the general election. Like the flip-side of Romney’s support here in Massachusetts; it’s not going to help him become president. Democrats are simply split on the candidate question, but Clinton must be happy that there was no rising tide that took the lead out of her hands.
It was amusing to see Chelsea (obviously on assignment from mom) nudging Bill away from reporters after casting his vote last night. The whole family is on task keeping the ex-president in check.
An interesting night, but there are still decisions to be made. If your state has yet to be counted, your vote is certainly going to make a difference.
Posted by James at February 6, 2008 6:29 AMWhen I went to bed last night, I was under the impression that Romney actually had fewer delegates than Huckabee, or at least that his momentum had ended. All he had picked up at that point was MA and UT.
Looks like I went to bed too early. At least I had a happy sleep.
Posted by: Julie at February 6, 2008 9:43 AMOf course we'd all be happier if Romney had experienced a complete crash and burn, but I certainly didn't expect it -- just got some false hope as the results began to come in. He still did pretty darn badly! Is Limbaugh peeing his pants today?
Posted by: Maggie at February 6, 2008 9:53 AMOn the one side, Romney has McCain declaring victory with an impressive count of delegates. On the other side he has Huckabee declaring victory, claiming he's in a two-man-race. What's Romney got to show for Tuesday?
"I didn't get trounced quite as badly as CNN said I was getting trounced early on in the evening! Yay!!!!"
Coming in second here is still losing, and Romney is spending money on this like crazy to watch his numbers being compared to *Huckabee.* Think on that.
Honestly, I'd rather see him spend more money, continue this bloody battle for second place and continue to be the favorite of people like Rush Limbaugh, preventing them from getting behind the clear winner early.
Posted by: James at February 6, 2008 9:59 AMI'm looking to find a count of actual votes overall (not broken down state-by-state, and for fucks sake not broken down by race and gender) and PLEDGED DELEGATES, not overall delegates (which includes the party-hack superdelegates who are largely supporting the party-hack Clinton). I found a listing of delegate totals on Wikipedia that shows Barack actually has won more delegates (when you don't include the superdelegates) but I am always loathe to trust anything I read on Wikipedia.
Posted by: David grenier at February 6, 2008 12:00 PMRe: Rove and Obama only winning in red states. Rove is (again) trying to dazzle people with bullshit and people, for reasons known only to God, take Rove seriously.
Last night, Barack Obama pulled in 72,000 more votes than Mike Huckabee in Alabama - a state Bush carried by 26 points in 2004. In Georgia, Obama got more votes than Huckabee and McCain combined, and that's a state Bush won by 17 points. In Oklahoma, Obama finished a distant second to Hillary Clinton (55/31) - and he still got more votes than McCain did to win the Republican side. That's a state Bush carried by 28 points four years ago. In Tennessee, Obama finished ten points behind Clinton - and still got 60,000 more votes than Huckabee did to win for the Republicans.
The untold story from Super Tuesday is that not one state is going to be safe for the Republicans in 2008. I'm not exaggerating. Four years ago Bush carried Oklahoma 66/34. Yesterday, Sooners chose to vote for the Dems over the Republicans by a 55/44 margin.
We can't see the wave yet, but if we're paying attention I think this is the water racing far away from the shore. There is a tsunami and its aimed at the Republican party.
Posted by: Brian at February 6, 2008 1:08 PMI do wonder why the media spent so much time talking about who won what state. Perhaps others have a different view of it, but I couldn't have given a rat's ass about that analysis in the case where they weren't winner-take-all states.
We'd been better served hearing how well, compared to previous showings, the different parties were getting people to the polls.
Posted by: James at February 6, 2008 1:33 PMDavid, did the first link James gave in his article not show the information you wanted? In the sidebar, there's a tally of pledged delegates. Were you looking for something else?
Posted by: Julie at February 6, 2008 3:40 PM"The untold story from Super Tuesday is that not one state is going to be safe for the Republicans in 2008. I'm not exaggerating. Four years ago Bush carried Oklahoma 66/34. Yesterday, Sooners chose to vote for the Dems over the Republicans by a 55/44 margin."
That's very misleading and actually very poor analysis, Brian. Yesterday, according to CNN, 731,073 people voted in the Oklahoma primary. Yes, 401,230 of those voters voted in the Democratic primary. In the '04 general election, 1,463,758 Oklahomans voted - 959,792 of those for Bush. So turnout yesterday was roughly half of what we saw in '04.
Making generalizations about the electorate based on the primaries isn't a good idea as turnout for primaries is usually pretty low. According to this page: http://www.ok.gov/~elections/04ppp.html Democrats had a much larger turnout in '04 Oklahoma primary. It didn't mean much in the end, though.
Posted by: jeremy at February 6, 2008 3:44 PMI just wanted to add that I am supporting Obama in this election as well ( I will cast my vote in next Tuesday's Maryland primary ). I didn't want anyone to think I was some crazy Republican trying to spin things.
Posted by: jeremy at February 6, 2008 3:46 PMNBC says Obama has the lead in delegates, once the count is more accurately counted:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8358.html
Still very close, but looking better for Obama.
Posted by: James at February 6, 2008 11:54 PM