Florida

Narrow lead so far for McCain. County-by-county breakdown seems to favor a narrow McCain victory. This, though, tends to re-enforce what I was saying earlier -- whoever wins is going to win a pretty narrow victory with less than forty percent of the vote. Hardly a decisive blow to the loser. But of course a McCain win of any sort will be spun by the press as the greatest landslide since Johnson/Goldwater.

Comments

Either way, Romney isn't going to stop now. He's got the money to negate any McCain bounce (or try, at least). Plus, Limbaugh is on crusade to bury McCain, so I'd be shocked if a McCain win ends the Mittmentum.

Posted by LeChuck | January 29, 2008 8:31 PM

I think Romney is badly hurt by this. Republican Primaries are winner take all. So even if it was 50.1% McCain and 49.9% Romney, Mitt would get nothing.

Posted by MNPundit | January 29, 2008 8:55 PM

I don't know about that, MN, you don't really see the delegate totals reported that prominently. But McCain's probably got the inside track at least for now.

Halperin's got an item up saying Rudy will drop out tomorrow and endorse McCain. I'd figure that Guiliani's voters would naturally lean McCain's way even without the endorsement. Correspondingly, Romney probably will get most of the Huckabee voters, but that's not as good a prize (though they are more numerous than Rudy's bloc) because Huck's probably hanging around through Super Tuesday, and because Huck's voters, like the Pa*ltards, tend to be somewhat idealistic and won't easily transfer their affections.

Posted by kth | January 29, 2008 9:02 PM

Except Florida is really dumb, and the GOP delegates are winner take all. So it is a dramatic blow.

Posted by Tony V | January 30, 2008 3:32 AM