Sorry 'luc, my money’s all tied up in Huckabee futures now.
Well, Texas is a big state and I think Huck will do well there.
The thing is that the Republicans have worked really hard to sew up the evangelical vote. So-called moral issues are front and center in a great many states and that has been crucial to recent Republican success. Now the chickens have come home to roost. Huckabee may not play well outside of evangelical circles, but those circles are huge in the GOP. The same churches that got out the vote for Bush are now working for Huck and that makes up for a lot of money and organization he doesn’t have.
Factor in that no one else can break free of the pack to take him on one-on-one. I’ll bet McCain wins NH and that will keep him around. If Giulinani can take FL he’ll be a factor and Romney will be in there at least through Super Tues. With those guys splitting votes, Huckabee will be positioned to sneak through and win any number of primaries. Looking at Super Tues. I think Huckabee could take nine states. TN, Al, GA, OK, MN, MO, ND, MT, AR, and WV would all seem to be realistic possibilities for him based on my perceptions. He may even win more if no one else can get traction.
And since there has been so much betting talk, here are the odds on the nomination form sportsbook.com
John McCain
9 - 5
Mike Huckabee
5 - 2
Rudy Giuliani
11 - 4
Mitt Romney
4 - 1
Ron Paul
10 - 1
Fred Thompson
20 - 1
Anyone who thinks Ron Paul has a better shot of being nominated than Fred Thompson is crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ron Paul standing is the result of his crazed supporters betting on him.
Yes, zero is not greater than zero, you do have a point.
Just like on the Dem side, there are six (count 'em, six) new polls released last night or this morning that polled NH residents up through yesterday.
Because, you know, we clearly don’t have enough polls yet, so we need to take a few more.
Five of them show McCain ahead, with leads of 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 points over Romney. The sixth, the Suffolk/WHDH tracker, shows Mitt up by 3. There doesn’t seem to be a clear direction to the momentum: the Suffolk tracker has shown Mitt’s lead go from 4 to 4 to 3 to its present 3; the CNN/UNH tracker shows McCain’s lead steady at 6, and the Zogby tracker has McCain’s lead going from 4 to 2 to -1 to its present 5. Apparently Mitt did well in last night’s debate, but we won’t know what difference that made until voters are surveyed today, and the results get released. And by then, one might as well wait for the actual primary results, which are a day and a half away.
Looks like McCain has the edge, though Romney’s not out.
I still don’t understand why Huck’s wasting his time in NH, other than to fly in for the debates. He’s going to be no better than third for sure, and probably a distant third at that. Meanwhile, he could have been campaigning in Michigan or SC, where he’d be getting all sorts of positive local media attention as the only candidate in the state. And he’d be stealing a march on McCain and Romney, who can’t afford to leave NH. Huck can, and should have.
I still think things are going to break for Huckabee. Giuliani’s strategy ensures there will be at least two candidates splitting the anti-Huckabee vote on Super Duper Tuesday --possibly three-- and with Huckabee wrapping up the large “values voters” segment he should be able to get a plurality in a lot of states.
Here’s Wikipedia’s Super Duper Tuesday map, and it’s hard to see it not split several ways.
I expect Rudy will win the NY-NJ-CT troika, Mitt will win Mass. and Utah, McCain will win Arizona, and Huck will win Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, with good chances at Colorado and North Dakota.
These are all states that, in 2004, had at least as high a percentage of white born-again/evangelical Bush voters as Iowa did. So Huck’s win in Iowa looks replicable in these other states.
Of the other major states (where CNN’s 2004 exit poll pages don’t list the white evangelical vote, for some reason), I could see Huck picking up MN and IL too if things broke right, but they could easily go to whichever of the non-Hucks is doing best going in. I can’t see Huck winning California at all, but he probably won’t need it.
Huckabee stands a real shot in Minnesota, provided there is no big change in the landscape between now and SDT. What you say? Solidly Democratic MN going for Huck? Sure, in the primaries.
Minnesota is basically four areas;
Twin Cities - overwhelmingly Democratic
The North - ditto
The Burbs - competitive
Farm Country - Republican
Farm country is pretty much Iowa again. Also, Minnesota is a caucus state so only the hard-core voters turn out. Unlike IA, MN Republicans don’t just vote and split. They have to put in about two hours to participate. Look for Huckabee to do well.
Just wait for the breaking news as breathless commentors interrupt Oprah to let us know that Minnesota has gotten all Hucked up.
Also, MN isn’t that solidly Democratic. Gore won it by 2% in 2000, and Kerry by 3% in 2004. MN’s had its share of GOP Senators and governors in recent years.
That’s quite interesting - thanks for the very informative post. It does sound like Huck’s got a very good chance up your way.
Wikipedia chart of the primary calendar and means of delegate selection.
What’s important here is which states are winner-take-all (WTA) states, because if you win a plurality of the votes, then all the delegates are belong to you, instead of just getting a somewhat bigger slice of the state’s delegats than anyone else.
NY, NJ, and CT, which Rudy’s got the inside track on, are WTA. Utah and Arizona, which should be almost automatic for Romney and McCain, are also WTA. Other Super Tuesday WTA states are MT, ND, MO, and DE. Virginia, which has its primary a week after Super Tuesday, is also WTA.
A lot of states are WTA by Congressional district, plus some at-large delegates, which are often allocated to the statewide winner. California and Florida are like this. This probably works to the benefit of the candidates who are perceived as being more moderate: many Congressional districts are ‘safe’ seats, and a candidate wins the same number of delegates by winning a CD with few Republicans as one with many Republicans, and the Republicans in heavily Dem districts are likely to be less conservative than the Republicans in solidly Republican districts.
I still think Huckabee’s going to fade. The press will go after him if he leads by too much, and there’s a lot of ammunition there. Huckabee was lucky to have Iowa as the first battleground - it’s the best possible state for him to find support in. I think he made ride a bit of a wave into New Hampshire - enough to keep his name up near the top, anyway. But after that as the campaigns move south, he’s moving into territory more friendly to people like McCain and Thompson. And as the campaigns go into Rudy territory (the north and east coast), he’s going to get chewed up. The populace is too liberal and not nearly evangelical enough to support him.
The only way he survives and stays on top as a leading candidate is if he can start providing substance or style to convince the non-evangelicals to vote for him. And given his recent public appearances, that doesn’t seem likely to me.
You did notice Huckabee’s Southern accent? And his huge leads in the polls of SC and Georgia voters?
Yes, but it’s my understanding that Huckabee’s real constituency is Evangelicals, and that Iowa has about the biggest percentage of Evangelical Republicans around. Among non-Evangelicals, Huckabee only collected 14% of the vote - good for 4th place.
Huckabee is currently third in South Carolina. And that’s after the post-Iowa bounce. And he’s not competitive at all in New Hampshire. A couple of middle-pack finishes and the bloom might come off Mr. Huckabee.
Yes, Evangelicals tend to skew rather heavily in Iowa. Pat Robertson beat Bush Sr. there in '88 and I believe Pat Buchanan also won there in '96. I think Huckabee is just part of that tradition. New Hampshire is much less religious. New Hampshire Republicans tend to be libertarians and fiscal conservatives rather than Bible thumpers. His best hope is to somehow do respectably in in NH and then come on really strong in SC. I think if he loses SC, he’s done.
One thing in his favor is that the GOP doesn’t have a Bush or a Dole type clear cut frontrunner right now. If he becomes the default Evangelical choice and the others rip each other apart, he could win some pluralities here and there and build momentum. He’s not as patently nutty as Robertson and Buchanan were. he could hold on for a while if he gets a few breaks.
You count funny. Average of the latest polls has Huckabee up by nearly 13%.
There are at least five polls that are operating as rolling daily trackers in NH: ARG, Zogby, Suffolk/WHDH, Rasmussen, and CNN/UNH. Everyone but CNN is up on the board at RCP with their results including yesterday’s polling.
Zogby and ARG have McCain up by 9 and 7, respectively, Suffolk has Romney up by 4, and in between we have Rasmussen with McCain up by 1.
Somebody’s gonna be wrong, that’s for sure. Elsewhere on the Web, I’ve put up my WAG of McCain 32, Romney 30, and Huck 12. I’ll stick with that.
Absent a genuinely thorough examination of the Wayne Dumond case (which so far, assorted MSM outlets have brought up, danced loosely around Huck’s role without looking too closely, then moved on, turning this into a “haven’t we already heard about this?” sort of story until someone really hammers on it), I don’t see what they’ve got that’s going to rile Huck’s base.
Baloney. If you had an Evangelical Index (I do, actually: take the % from CNN’s 2004 exit polls characterizing themselves as white born-again/evangelicals, then multiply that by the % of them that voted for Bush), Iowa is slightly above the national average, by 21.8% to 18%.
But lots of states would be even better. The comparable numbers for Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas are 37.8, 37.7, and 37.6%, respectively. (Just substitute another state code in place of IA in that first link to get the links for other states.) Even Michigan’s at 17%. Huck can certainly win there, especially in a 3-way race against both Romney and McCain.
NH (and the Northeast in general) is where Huck’s at his worst. Like I’ve said, I have no idea why Huck even bothered campaigning in NH. Too many secular Republicans, too many independents, not enough fundies.
And also more friendly to him. (Will Thompson stick around for SC and FL? Hard to tell.) And while McCain’s military background plays well in the southeast, the hostility between him and the fundies from 2000 hasn’t been forgotten, and doesn’t play well at all.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Huck all but sweep the Southeast.
Yeah, but Huck doesn’t need to win NY, NJ, and New England. The only essential for him is that no single candidate emerges from Super Tuesday as the clear leader among the anti-Hucks. If McCain’s the obvious anti-Huck going in, then McCain does well in AZ, CA, and the mountain west, while Rudy gets NY-NJ-CT and Mitt gets MA and UT, and Mitt picks up a whole slew of states: Alabama, Arkansas, GA, TN, OK, MO, and quite possibly ND, CO, and MN. Maybe even IL.
He’s got style; he’s easily the most effective speaker of the bunch. And on substance, all five of the main contenders’ policies are really just sound bites; it’s downright scary. For substance, go Dem.
No matter who wins in NH tonight, Romney will have the overall delegate lead. There’s a good spin opportunity if ever there was one.