AP Calls Nevada For Romney
As expected, really…no news yet on any of the day’s other results, but I’ll update when available…
UPDATE 2:29 p.m.: With 11% of the vote in, Clinton is up by 4%. Based on the entrance poll results, this is enough for me: I’m jumping the gun yet again…in a worldwide exclusive, I’m declaring Hillary Clinton the winner in Nevada (again, as expected)…
UPDATE 6:55 p.m.: The Democrats are done for the day, but with 3% of the South Carolina vote in, McCain has a 14-point edge over Huckabee…
UPDATE 7:00 p.m.: 6% in, and the McCain lead is down to 5…could be a squeaker…
UPDATE 7:13 p.m.: 19% of the vote in, and McCain is up by 6…based on the exit polling data, that’s enough for me…John McCain in a huge, huge win in South Carolina…
Huge win for McCain. Quite possibly an end to both Thompson (a too distant third) and Giuliani (whose Florida + Super Tuesday strategy depended on his being the strongest centrist candidate remaining — running against just Romney and Huckabee, he’d have done it).
But can someone explain to me the punditry spin that Romney’s done for? While McCain picked up 25 delegates (15 in SC + 6 in MI + 4 in NV), Romney picked up 40 (23 in MI + 17 in NV). Romney’s well ahead in delegates, with McCain in third place, and has taken first place in three of the six states which have voted. I’m not a big fan of Romney, but it’s hard to see the logic here. (Perhaps I just need to stop watching CNN…)
Mark. How is it a huge, huge win for McVain? SC is an Open Primary State and approx 1/2 his votes came from independents. Wait till he runs into the brick wall that is the Closed Primary.
Clint. I agree, it seems like 08 will go down as the year of breathlessly clueless pundits & talking heads. Even FNC has bought into the “Romney’s done for” meme. I think it was only within the last couple of days before anyone (Charles Krautheimer?) ever there brought up the point that it could be a race for delegates, as opposed to the number of wins. Maybe I need to stop watching FNC
Anyhoo, Mitt & John practically tied today in delegates, with 18 & 19 respectively. Or if one prefers to count medals, after 6 races, according to CNN’s Election Center:
Mitt with 3 gold & 2 silver for 72 delegates
John with 2 gold, 1 silver (Beat by Ron Paul in NV) & 1 bronze for 38 Delegates
Huck with 1 gold, 1 silver & 2 bronze for 29 delegates
Fred with 1 silver & 1 bronze for 8 delegates
Oddly enough, Ron Paul beat McVain in NV to take the silver to go with his 1 bronze for 6 delegates. Rudy & Hunter trail with Hunter dropping out. Interesting to see where his 1 delegate will go.
If, McVain wins FL, he could sweep all 57 delegates, altho they’ve been known to vote otherwise in the national convention. Question is will the GOP back him with the other 57 delegates (1/2 withheld for violating the date rule) or will they cast them for someone else?
Huge win for McCain for two reasons:
(1) Beat Huckabee in a very religious state.
(2) No Republican has won the GOP nomination without winning South Carolina since 1976…
Clint, I wondering also about CNN’s reporting. According to their Election Center (updated just 3 minutes ago, they show Hillary & Obama tied at 14 delegates each, even tho she won NV overall. Yet in another section on the same page, they show her with 12 delegates.
I don’t intend to understand all the intricacies of donk caucusing, but needless to say for cHillary, this is not the way you want to win the West. Seems like we had a big to do over candidate X winning the popular vote while losing to candidate Y with the most delegates, i.e. Electoral College. Imagine the cockfight if it gets down to the convention with NV writ large?
Mark,
1) SC may be
religiousabout conservative values, but is foremost military-centric. A war hero/vet and/or incumbent (Reagan, Papa Bush, Dole) trumps apreacherconservative values (remember Pat Robertson?) any day, unless it’s a two-fer. In 00, McVain screwed a sure thing by insulting not just “religion” but one of their own. This year, betwixt Mitt, Fred & Huck, they got more evangelicals combined than McVain.2) True, I think mainly due to the Open Primary format. Since, as I mentioned, before, McVain got about 1/2 of his support from independents, I think he will run into a brick wall in the Closed Primary States. Just my gut feeling, but Huck sank because he’s not the real deal evangelist that he pretended to be and without John in the race, he still wouldn’t sway the military vote. And then there’s the MSM reverb effect “John leads, John leads”.
Look at it this way, SC was a pretty good barometer of nationwide electability due to the religious & military vote. However, this is the year that all CW thus far has been upended and no reason to assume that SC is immune — as Mao might put it, 32 years is too short to draw a trend. John won on the war, border & conservative values in that order. Those priorities will not be the same in other States, where border or conservative values leads.
Mark-
Though your point #2 does seem to be all the rage among the talking heads, it’s a bit overblown. There have only been 3 contested Republican races since SC moved its primary up — so picking 3/3 and looking more representative than Iowa and New Hampshire isn’t really as impressive as it sounds when you say “picked the nominee every time in the last 31 years”. Even more importantly, those three wins were with 55% (Reagan 1980), 45% (Dole 1996) and 53% (Bush 2000) — really rather hard to say that McCain’s 33% (to 30%, 16% and 15%) is just like those. Even in Dole’s case, his win was vastly stronger (45-29-13-10) with a second and third place who were on opposite sides of him ideologically, so no way they could be seen as taking votes from each other to his benefit (Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes).
Don’t get me wrong, McCain looks really strong at the moment — and looks likely to take Florida, and go into Super Tuesday as the actual frontrunner. I just wouldn’t disregard Romney, yet, especially when he’s still the actual frontrunner, in both total popular vote received and total delegates received. And if Rudy does pull off Florida’s winner-take-all 57 delegates to leap into a strong second just before Super Tuesday…
(I just wish McCain could take a moment to address Immigration — saying something like, “Look, I see this as a national security issue. We’ve got to secure our borders — and waiting until January, 2011 when we might have a Republican majority in the Senate again to get a better bill just doesn’t cut it. I was willing to hold my nose and support amnesty as the price for starting to build the fence nw and hire more border patrol agents today, rather than three or four years from now. I still think that was the right choice. We can’t wait four more years for secure borders.”
Of course, that would still leave me cringing at his remarks about pharmaceutical companies…)
Mark, I think you’re right. That he took out Huckabee on basically his home turf and heads into Florida as the frontrunner there makes SC an enormous win for McCain. Which is true regardless of whether he ultimately gets the nomination. I don’t see why we have to consider Romney when deciding whether McCain wins get to be counted as “huge”, but I clearly don’t understand anything that goes on in Andy’s head.
Also, Andy, please do stop watching “FNC”. You’d be doing yourself a favor.
McCain also gave a very nice speech last night — that’s important. We could do much worse than to have as our next president someone who’s strong on defense and communicates well.
Ryan, I’d rather listen to FNC than Clinton’s Network News any day. If some ouf us didn’t watch it, we wouldn’t catch McVain nuggets like this:
Clint, if that don’t worry people concerened about illegal immigration, then nothing will, i.e. Z-visas, 24 hr turnaround for DHS to background check and approve 10 million illegals… If he turns out to be the nominee, then we had better focus extra hard on who will be sent to the Senate & House in Nov.
Ryan wrote:
Heh, if the voices would hush now and then, you might be able to read, follow and think. Hillary & Mitt are front runners by dint of their total votes and delegates in the bag. Saying Obama or McCain, who are behind on both counts, are frontrunners does not make it so.
If the MSM is correct when they say McVain is the frontrunner, then why isn’t Obama? He got more delegates than Hill, even tho she won the most votes out of NV and is expected to blow her away in SC?
Plus now that Hunter, and likely Fred is out shortly, their voters are more likely to go with Mitt or Rudy than with Huck or John. That and John is liable to stick his foot in his mouth but soon (on the eve of Super Tuesday?). And consider this, after Super Tuesday, anyone not in 3rd place or better will be pressured to drop out. If that’s Huck, where do you think his base will go? If, more or less a 3 way split, then Mitt’s definitely hanging in till November. Do the math.
Andy, I disagree with you on whether Romney or McCain is currently the frontrunner. I think that, for the moment, it is clearly McCain. However, you are quite correct in pointing out that McCain is vulnerable to various conservative groups that have supported Fred Thompson moving to Romney. For McCain, it actually helps to have Huckabee stay in the race, you are correct there…
Another wildcard – suppose Rudy’s strategy fails, as it looks like it might, and he has to drop out…will his supporters go to Romney? I doubt it very much…they are much more likely to support McCain. Hmmm…that’s perhaps better explicated in a full-fledged post, perhaps very soon…
Andy, I know reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit, but I don’t remember anyone named “Ryan” or “Mark” calling McCain the frontrunner until AFTER you accused us of doing it. While I agree with Mark that he is, in fact, the frontrunner, it doesn’t matter in the least. A win for McCain can be huge whether it makes him the frontrunner or not. To outperform the Jesus-freak on what most consider his home turf is a pretty big accomplishment.
As for your “nugget”, it seems to me McCain was asked a loaded question by a slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging neanderthal moron and responded with the sort of waffling answer you have to give in order to be viable in the party of insane xenophobic racists if you aren’t, in fact, a xenophobic racist.
Lastly, while it’s sort of like kicking a dead horse at this point, consider this:
“If the MSM is correct when they say McVain is the frontrunner, then why isn’t Obama? He got more delegates than Hill, even tho she won the most votes out of NV and is expected to blow her away in SC?”
I know it’s hard for you to focus on things like logic and coherence, but your first sentence is staggeringly incomprehensible. If the MSM is correct when they say McCain is the frontrunner – despite the fact that he has fewer delegates than Romney – how in the world are they under any obligation to think Obama is the frontrunner for having more delegates than Hillary at some point? If current delegate count doesn’t matter in one race, why should it matter in the other?
Ryan @ #13:
1st & 2nd instance of “frontrunner” goes to Clint @ #6
3rd instance of “frontrunner” goes to Ryan @ #7:
My 1st instance of “frontrunner” is @ #10:
As you were clearly saying?
As for my nugget, I suppose you, my friend, think Juan Hernandez is a
slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging neanderthal moronsmooth-talking, uprighteous modern-day sophisticate helping McVain’s Reform Institute formulate amnesty so that North America can move towards a borderless region. If that’s your position, fine. Doesn’t mean I’m xenaphobic for opposing that. The point is McVain is being truthful when he says he hasn’t changed his loaded position in favor of full amnesty, with or without a secure border.Finally, I was only pointing out the inconsistencies in the MSM’s logic in order to promote their preferred candidate from each party. Nothing more, nothing less and certainly far from a dead horse.
In any event, we now see that McCain is indeed the front runner as is Obama, now that Kennedy and other old-line democrats are telling the super-delegates that it’s ok to back Obama. The dominoes started falling when the Governor of KS backed Obama over her sister-in-arms post-SOTU.