Exit Polls South Carolina
UPDATED BELOW Something awkward is going on in South Carolina: many of the voters are Evangelicals who believe that the most important thing is that the candidate shares their “values.” The other important issue? Illegal immigration. Yet, who is leading according to the exit polls? That’s right, Senator John McCain. Do people even know who they are voting for these days, or are they just going with the person they know? Meanwhile, Team Romney is predicting a McCain win in South Carolina: “This is a state where John McCain has 100% voter identification so he should be able to win the primary.”
If McCain wins he is not, despite whatever his supporters and the media (but I’m repeating myself) will try to tell us, the favorite. He and Romney will both have done fairly well, delegate-wise, with Romney actually firmly in the lead and with Romney having more money than McCain.
What will happen is that it will quickly become a two-men race: with Thompson and Huckabee basically being made irrelevant (if Huckabee can’t win SC, he’s done - he’ll stay in there, of course, but he won’t have the money to truly compete on Super Tuesday). Thompson will, by the way, probably drop out soon.
No, it will be McCain vs. Romney with a potential surge from Rudy Giuliani if he wins Florida. That would make it a three-men race.
Again, if Huckabee doesn’t win in South Carolina today, he will still play a (significant?) role in the nomination process, but he won’t be able to win it. He’ll stay in there though, probably in an attempt to take as many delegates as possible, hoping that it will help him persuade the eventual nominee to pick him as his running mate.
UPDATE: Hot Air has the following image up:
That’s incredibly bad news for Thompson, good news for Huckabee, reasonably bad news for McCain and good news for Romney considering he hasn’t really campaigned in SC in the last couple of days.
I agree. I think that the Republican party should hurry and up and get behind Romney. Most of the bad press he gets comes from the DNC. They know that he’s a cool customer who can defeat their candidate. If Thompson hadn’t been in SC, Romney would’ve placed 2nd or 1st. I think a Romney/Thompson ticket would be broadly acceptable to many.
Despite that graphic, It still looks like Mccain won, as half the voters are 50+ and old people like mccain. Besides I heard he was buying at the Early Bird Buffet in Myrtle Beach. Independents are still a part of this state, and they do always break mccains way. It might be close, but mccain takes it.
I’m a Fred Head and voted for Fred. I’ll wait till the actual results are in (I don’t trust polls especially exit polling because the media tries to use it to suppress the vote of candidates they don’t like).
The two I can’t stand are McCain and Huckabee. They are horribly soft on immigration and support open borders and amnesty.
Come one people… if Kerry couldn’t win in 2004 against a Bush administration as the Iraq war evidence was vanishing then there’s NO WAY Romney can win against any democrat this year.
Is that an assumption that all Republicans are conservatives I hear?
Heh.
Quote of the day, from Stephen Green’s live-blog over at PJ Media:
“Just in. Brit Hume, squinting, says that exit polls have SC as John McCain 32%, Mike Huckabee 27%, and Ron Paul left wondering why Internet robo-spammers can’t win him just one freakin’ real world primary already.”
LMAO.
I dont think it is going to matter. The Rep. Can’t win the white house this election I am afraid to say. The war, and the real mess here at home have spelled doom for the Rep. party.