Florida and South Carolina results: what do they mean?
Written by Mark Pack on 30th January 2008 – 7:48 amJohn McCain: another win confirms his comback and gives him a chance as we head towards Super Tuesday, where 22 states coast-to-coast are up for grabs. His campaign still looks to be struggling to have the financial and organisational strength to fight on that much large stage, but he’s had an excellent run in with a series of victories giving his campaign a major boost.
Mitt Romney: his campaign will be disappointed to lose to McCain by a small margin - again - but will be hoping that a few early loses will be swept away into the curiosity corner of history by major wins on Super Tuesday when his well-funded campaign (and very, very deep personal pockets) will be able to afford TV commercials on a scale the others and unlikely to be able to match.
Rudy Guiliani: disaster. His strategy was based on sitting out the early contests and then sweeping in to win the big states like Florida. His national poll ratings have plunged, he is losing support in key Super Tuesday states and he didn’t even come close to winning in Florida. He is now expected to pull out and endorse McCain according to the US media.
Mike Huckabee: has again failed to get close to matching his early upset. The fall in his support late in the Florida campaign as Romney surged suggest he has lost out in the battle to be the ‘true Republican’ candidate against McCain.
Barack Obama: having hammered Hilary Clinton in the South Carolina Democrat primary on Saturday, he got the momentum again, further boosted by a subsequent clutch of Kennedy family endorsements. Losing now in Florida to Clinton means it’s back to as you were: he’s still credible, but not romping it. The big challenge is to overcome the Clinton machine when the contest goes in effect national for Super Tuesday.
Hilary Clinton: losing Florida after not just losing, but being overwhelmed, in South Carolina would have been a huge blow. But now her win means it’s 1-1 in the immediate run up to the big event of Super Tuesday. A nagging doubt for her campaign: did Bill’s campaigning in South Carolina let Hilary effectively concentrate on other states, and so is having him out on the campaign trail in the highest possible profile manner something to be repeated in the next few days, or was the South Carolina thumping a warning that, actually, Bill isn’t going down that well? The scene of crowds of (Obama supporting) Democrats booing when Bill Clinton appeared on TV after the South Carolina results may well give pause for thought. But Super Tuesday should play to the Clinton strengths, requiring as it does huge organisational strength across the whole country.
John Edwards: even his latest fundraising email implicitly admits he’s not really expecting to win any states. But he is continuing to pick up delegate numbers (though not in Flordia where Democrat rules means no delegrates were at stake as the state had brought the primary forward in breach of the party’s rules). And who knows? Maybe that dream of political enthusiasts - a contest in which no candidate gets a majority of delegates - will happen, making the Democrat convention a real decision making event with Edwards holding the key to who gets the nomination. In which case one question will be: does Edwards want a shot at Vice President again or is Attorney General his preference?
Posted in LDVUSA
30th January 2008 at 9:19 am
A lot still rests on California, where 20% of the total delegates from all the states on Super Tuesday will be selected. Romney and Obama are not out of it but they can’t afford too many more substantial losses.
30th January 2008 at 10:11 am
My concern (as a liberal - in the US and UK sense) is that if McCain sews it up on Super Tuesday and the Democrats fight like cats in a sack at the Convention in July, we may end up with him looking statesmanlike, and a lot of negativity around them. You just have to keep telling yourself that the Democrats have two really good candidates and the Republicans have none….
30th January 2008 at 10:54 am
Don’t buy the spin on Florida. It isn’t 1-1 at all. Florida had all of its delegates taken away after illegally moving up the calendar. Hillary was the only won who campaigned there (by hosting ‘fundraisers’) and Obama respected the party too much to do likewise. Florida is as irrelevant as Michigan was.
30th January 2008 at 11:07 am
Don’t count out Romney for the Republicans. McCain has never won more than 35% of Republicans (Independents pushed him over the top in NH and SC, and they don’t get to vote in most primaries). An awful lot more of registered Republicans think of themselves as conservatives rather than moderates, and most of them think McCain just isn’t one of them - he’s too “off the wall” on immigration, campaign finance and climate change, as well as other stuff. If Huckabee pulls out, the conservatives will no longer be split and Romney will pick up a lot of speed. McCain is the front-runner, but by no means is it a done deal.
I’m shamelessly partisan on the Democratic side, as I think Clinton as the nominee would be a disaster. But Obama has work to do to catch her, as she still has healthy poll leads and good organisation in the bigger states which are voting on Super Tuesday (California, New York, New Jersey). For Obama, this is not only about delegate numbers, it’s also partly about perceptions.
He needs to close the gap on Clinton in the bigger states so that he gets good delegate numbers from them. This means he has to make inroads into groups she’s winning at the moment (lower incomes, union members, Latinos, and seniors). Senator Ted Kennedy may help, especially if he spends the next week stumping for Barack in the south-west.
Then, he needs to hoover up wins in the states Clinton has been avoiding - not only Illinois, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, but also Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado, South Dakota, and even a couple of north-east states, like Massachusetts and Delaware.
All of this would do several things: it would help to convince key opinion-formers and the media that Clinton was no shoo-in, even if she wins the big states; it would keep the contest going to the later states (Washington, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania) through March and April; it would suggest that Obama is more likely to win support in the key swing states which the Democrats need to win the general; it might convince more of the “superdelegates” - the ex officio members of the Convention not chosen in the primaries and caucuses - to side with Obama, as Clinton has a strong advantage with them at the moment; and if Obama sweeps most of the South, this could help convince John Edwards to come on board if he is left in the role of Convention king-maker.
It’s still more likely that Clinton will be nominated, but there’s plenty of reasons to believe that it’s going to be close.
30th January 2008 at 11:10 am
Watch out for a potential Bill Richardson endorsement on Thursday for Hillary. Her ‘Hispanic firewall’ might well deliver her the nomination.
30th January 2008 at 1:06 pm
Actually, it’s Obama’s spin that only Hilary campaign there. His campaign worked there too
30th January 2008 at 1:11 pm
Romney should be walking the Republican primaries. He is Anglo-Saxon, he has the support of the elite, and he has plenty of money. But he is a Mormon, and most Americans don’t like Mormons, especially Evangelical Christians, who make up the core of Republican support.
McCain is pushing himself so far to the right his reputation as a “moderate” looks decidedly shaky. Conversely, do the rednecks really think his jingoism is more than a ploy to outmanoevre Romney?
Strangely, polls indicate that Americans have greater reservations about a woman as Preisdent than a negro. I don’t believe it, but those are the figures.
I think Hillary is going to have problems on the doorstep. And the likely response to an Obama candidature in many parts of the country will be: “I aint gonna vote for no goddam n****r.”
Which is why Edwards is the (electorally) “safe” choice.
Who would make the best President?
Well, Clinton, obviously. If we can bear the thought.
30th January 2008 at 2:25 pm
Edwards has just dropped out, so not sure you are on the mark there
30th January 2008 at 2:52 pm
6- Are you in the pay of Bill?? I’m pretty sure that he didn’t campaign there at all although some ads may have crossed the border to a few households. Personally, I am adding it to the list of Clinton dirty tricks (Jesse Jackson, ‘admiring’ Reagan etc)
30th January 2008 at 3:14 pm
Mark @ 6: Obama didn’t campaign there and wasn’t officially running, but he has an organisation setup there for later and a huge bunch of volunteers doing work for him anyway. Perhaps the biggest thing about Hillary effectively campaigning there and worse, attempting to get the delegates seated is that last August she signed a pledge promising not to and has been branded by a New Hampshire paper that used to back her as a liar as a result. I think that hurts her pretty badly overall. Admittedly I am biased, I’ve been backing Obama since his ‘04 speech, as have a few US based friends.
mark @ 8: Yes, Edwards has withdrawn, earlier than I expected, and specifically not endorsing. I think that favours Obama slightly but I’m not sure. Damn shame though, I was hoping he’d pick up enough delegates to form a swing in the Convention.
30th January 2008 at 3:27 pm
On Florida - in reality the Democratic side was only a straw poll as the outcome couldn’t affect anything. Neither side did any real campaigning there. What matters is real contests with real campaigning.
Obama still has the momentum, the Kennedy endorsement is significant, and most importantly Obama is attracting support from independents and those who haven’t participated before.
30th January 2008 at 4:24 pm
What purpose does disenfancishing Democat voters have just because the state parties (presumably it takes both of them to agree) to move their primaries forward?
30th January 2008 at 4:27 pm
Simon, only following it from the sidelines, but basically the national party doesn’t want to keep bringing the start of the campaign forward, it’s early enough as it is. All states are aware of the national rules for when they can hold them and chose to break them.
Whether those rules are good or not isn’t for me to say, but they’re there, and trying to change them post-facto means it’ll keep happening. If the official campaign start is Feb 5th, then that’s when it should start, it’s long enough already.
30th January 2008 at 5:09 pm
“And the likely response to an Obama candidature in many parts of the country will be: “I aint gonna vote for no goddam n****r.””
I don’t doubt it. However (1) did those people vote Dem in 2000/4 and (2) did they make a difference between winning and losing states.
A black democrat probably isn’t going to win in the south. But then the Dems aren’t winning in the south beforehand. They were winning in the liberal NE and west coast and they may not swing as much on race votes.
What is interesting is whether Obama might tilt a couple of marginals the Dems way with increased black turnout (possibly Ohio, Florida - maybe even somewhere like Louisiana which still elects Dem senators though the displacement of New Orleans may be a factor).
The other issues is Obama v either McCain or Romney doesn’t give the GOP the lock on the Christian (Right) vote it has had in recent years. The last mid-terms saw some subtle campaigning by the Dems with soft Christian candidates flaking off a bit of that vote.
I’ll take McCain over Romney any day though. McCain is immensely sound on torture/Guantanamo and not to bad on campaign finance and environment. Romney says he wants to double Guantanamo so that he can have terrorist suspects locked up without access to lawyers.
30th January 2008 at 6:56 pm
Hywel Morgan wrote: “I don’t doubt it. However (1) did those people vote Dem in 2000/4 and (2) did they make a difference between winning and losing states.”
Sure. Most out-and-out racists who vote already vote Republican. But the risk is that an Obama candidature would bring out additional rednecks who don’t normally bother to vote for anyone (50% in the US don’t vote).
On the plus side, Obama has a more attractive personality than Hillary and will appeal to liberal and moderate people outside the South, Sun Belt and Mississippi Basin who might otherwise stay at home.