McCain, Clinton Win Super Tuesday

Posted on February 6, 2008

On the Republican side, John McCain trounced his opponents on Super Tuesday, emerging as the clear frontrunner after winning nine states, including New York, Arizona, Connecticut, California and Missouri. Mitt Romney won seven states, including Massachusetts, Utah and North Dakota. Mike Huckabee did surprisingly well in the South, winning five states, including West Virginia, Alabama and Georgia. The delegate count is with McCain (602): it's hard to see how Mitt Romney (201 delegates) can catch him at this point. Huckabee (152 delegates) is splitting off evangelical votes from Romney, making it difficult for Romney to emerge as the "truly conservative" candidate.

Although New Mexico's votes are still being counted, Hillary Clinton was the winner on the Democratic side in a very closely fought race. Although Barack Obama won a lot of states (13) including most of the small ones -- Alaska had only 400 or so votes and always goes Republican in the general election anyway -- he did take Connecticut and Delaware. But he totally failed to meet the giant-sized expectations of the last minute polling. Zogby was especially wrong: he had Obama winning by double digits in California, which he lost by ten points to Clinton.

Hillary Clinton held off a media onslaught by Oprah Winfrey, Maria Shriver, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to handily win California, Massachusetts, New York and Arizona. Missouri was very close, but eventually went to Obama. Hillary also won Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Overall, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and the big states that Democrats would need to win in November. The delegate counts won't be in until all votes are counted, but it looks like Hillary is ahead in pledged delegates, and when superdelgates are factored in she's ahead of Obama by about 80.

McCain looks like he has clear sailing ahead for the nomination. On the Democratic side, it looks like a long and ugly primary season is ahead.