On this year’s Super Tuesday, 24 states will hold primaries or caucuses for one or both parties’ presidential nominations; when it’s over, more than 40% of the delegates will have been chosen – which is unprecedented. Is this likely to produce a clear winner/nominee on each side, or are the remaining Dem and Pub primaries still worthy of attention, effort, prognostication?
Speaking from the peanut gallery, I hope not. If nothing else, there’s been a large amount of insightful comment here. And besides, a nine-month election campaign is going to be terrible.
Perhaps, though, I could add an addendum to your OP: what if one side is decided and the other isn’t? It seems to me that the undecided party would benefit greatly from the publicity.
Perhaps – but meanwhile the other party’s uncrowned candidate needn’t wait for the convention, but can hit the campaign trail running right away.
I would see it as just the opposite. If the Democratic nominee is decided long before the Republican nominee, then she (or he) gets free mudslinging, paid for by the Republicans. The past year of Republican squabbling certainly hasn’t made the GOP any more popular, so it’s tough to see how six more months of infighting would help.
And to flip that, the GOP party and the remaining candidates get to throw mud and compare and contrast themselves against the DEM nominee.
I’m not convinced Super/Tsunami/Hyperbole Tuesday will settle things for the Democrats, but it’s possible. I really can’t imagine the GOP race being over on that date. Romney proved he’s still in it, so it’s likely that four candidates will split the states, with the one farthest back (Giuliani) having a good shot at winning New York and California. Since most of the delegates will still be out there, I think that race will keep going.
If Thompson were to win SC on Saturday (possible), and Guliani wins Florida, then that means Super Tuesday will see 5 nominees who have each won a caucus or primary, and with no one having an obvious lead.
Under those circumstances, you could see the Super Tuesday states settling absolutely nothing on the Republican side - Each of those five candidates has a geographic constituency represented on Super Tuesday.
On the other hand, if McCain wins SC, which he probably will, and wins FL where he’s currently leading, then he could ride a wave of support into Super Tuesday, already looking like the presumptive nominee, and a lot of states could swing his way and end the race.
The way it looks right now, either McCain wins on Super Tuesday, or no one does.
It certainly has the potential to give one candidate a big enough boost that the Bandwagon Effect will carry that candidate through the remaining primaries. Since I don’t know the polling numbers for the various states involved, I can’t but guess (and how many of the states are “winner take all”?). It conceivably could happen with the Democrats; the Republican race seems to even for it to happen (tho’ I suppose we shouldn’t discount Sam Stone’s senario).
What it certainly will do is knock out all the “also-rans” and reduce the race to two candidates (perhaps three for the GOP).
If one candidate comes out of Super Tuesday with a commanding lead, then they’re gonna be tough to bring down.
On the Dem side, this is quite possible - all that’s needed is for either Hillary or Obama to win a large majority of the delegates in play on Feb. 5.
On the GOP side, it’s looking less and less likely that anyone will be able to do that. We’ve had three major primaries/caucuses on that side, and they’ve produced three different winners. Even if neither Thompson nor Rudy breaks through and wins SC or FL, Rudy’s still got a good chance of winning NY, NJ, and CT (all three states are winner-take-all, so that would be a big delegate trove) on Super Tuesday, while McCain, Huck, and Mitt split up the rest of that day’s delegate haul. (And Rudy and Fred will both get some delegates outside the NYC-area states, since almost all of them are not winner-take-all.)
I could see one GOP candidate getting 40% of the Super Tuesday delegates, but it’s a lot harder for me to envision any of them getting 60% of them. Somebody may have a decent lead on Feb. 5, but I can’t see its being over.
‘currently’ = ‘before he lost in Michigan.’
Unless somebody’s polled Floridians this morning, and published the results already.