Some thoughts on the 2008 election, with Nevada and potentially South Carolina behind us

The past week has seen some interesting news events for the 2008 presidential election. We have had both the Nevada caucus and the South Carolina Republican primary. We have also had Fred Thompson dropping out of the race. So I'm going to talk about all this interesting news in this post.

We're going to start with both the Nevada caucus and the South Carolina Republican primary. For the Democratic caucus in Nevada, Senator Hillary Clinton beat back Illinois Senator Barack Obama 51 percent to 45 percent, with strong support coming from Latino and women voters. According to CNN News, women "made up nearly 60 percent of those taking part in Saturday's contest, and the New York senator and former first lady led Obama 52 percent to 35 percent among those voters." This is important because it is showing that Clinton is connecting with the women voters, and garnering their support. Clinton won the New Hampshire primary over Obama with strong support from the women voters--by a 13-point margin. In the Iowa caucus, the women's vote was pretty much split, between Clinton taking the women over 60 vote, while Obama was preferred by women between the ages of 18 to 59. I think the Clinton turn-around started with Hillary's big crying scene in New Hampshire, just the day before the primary vote. There were a number of factors at play here--Clinton showing an emotional side in the campaign, the media's frenzy on playing up the crying story, the over-analysis of Hillary's crying and the demise of her campaign, Chris Matthews misogyny against Clinton and women in general. All of that led to a resurgence in support for Hillary Clinton's campaign and that the Clinton campaign has been effective in gathering, and keeping, the support of women in the Nevada caucus. The second factor here is the Latino vote. Hillary Clinton won the Latino vote in Nevada by nearly 3 to 1. Latinos make up around 25 percent of the state's population and 14 percent of the caucus participants. This is a huge strength that the Clinton campaign can use in the southwest and California for gathering support, and votes. We could see an interesting situation where Clinton could pick up the southwestern states with the Latino vote, and Obama picking up the southern states with the African-American vote, with the northeastern and mid-western states splitting the vote. The latest South Carolina polls show Obama leading Clinton at an average of around 44 percent to 31 percent, with South Carolina's primary to take place this Saturday. So we have some very interesting dynamics taking place in the Democratic race here.

Now I want to look into the Obama campaign. As we are seeing with the latest South Carolina polls, Obama is leading Clinton by an average of around 44 percent to 31 percent. You can see the Pollster.com graph below:

Public opinion poll results for South Carolina Democratic primary. From Pollster.com

Here we see an almost inverse relationship between Hillary Clinton's sudden drop in the poll numbers in late 2007, with Barack Obama's sudden rise at around the same time. Something has happened which has caused this shift in the public opinion poll numbers between Clinton and Obama. We can speculate on the different variables here--Obama's call for change, Clinton's talk of leadership and experience, Clinton's crying, media pundits speculating on African-American or women turnout. Or this could be South Carolina voters switching between the two candidates month-to-month, or even day-to-day. Either way, we now have Obama leading Clinton by a sizable margin of around 13 percentage points, with 3 days left before the South Carolina primary. If Obama is going to win South Carolina, he is going to have to win it through the African-American vote, over that of the women's vote that Hillary Clinton may just take. This brings up a very fascinating situation, where could have the race vote of African-Americans selecting Obama, verses the sex vote of women selecting Hillary Clinton. Both are trying to choose their own historic first African-American or female candidate for president. I can't even speculate how this will affect the Democratic race.

But I will say that Obama does need to win the South Carolina primary, not as much as his campaign depends upon it, but rather to continue the see-saw action of the changing front-runner position. I think we have a situation where Democrats have favorable opinions on both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton--they could happily vote and support either candidate for president. This see-saw action of who is in the lead, keeps the race tight between these two front-running candidates. If Clinton wins South Carolina, this will give her an advantage of winning four states (Clinton has won New Hampshire, Michigan, and Nevada) to Obama's single win in Iowa. South Carolina may also provide an early indicator of whether Obama can generate enough African-American support in the southern states, and potentially Florida, in order to counter potential Clinton support in the northeast (New York and New Jersey) and the west (California). So we still have an exciting race here.

Now I want to go into the John Edwards campaign. John Edwards desperately needs to win South Carolina. Unfortunately, Edwards will not win the state, but might make a second-place finish behind a potential Obama win--and that is a big speculation at best. Pollster.com is showing Edwards lagging behind in South Carolina at 15 percent. In the Nevada caucus, Edwards placed a distant third with four percent of the vote. I don't believe that Edwards can win South Carolina with Barack Obama in the race. African-Americans, who may have supported Edwards populist The Two Americas theme, are more excited in embracing Obama's theme of change (and the possible electing of a first African-American to the White House). We are coming down to a race of two historic presidential front-runners for the Democrats--an African-American. There is really no place for John Edwards in this race.

But while John Edwards will not win the Democratic nomination for president, he can still be a factor in selecting between these two front-runners. As long as Edwards can stay competitively in the race, he could still generate enough delegates to play king-maker in demanding concessions from either Obama or Clinton for his support. Edwards has a strong, progressive, populist message to give to the American people. It is important to keep this message fresh for the American voters, and hopefully to incorporate it into the political policies when a new Obama or Clinton administration could take office in January 2009.

The Republican side of the race is still in turmoil. Mitt Romney won the Nevada caucus with 51 percent of the vote. Ron Paul coming in second place at 14 percent of the vote, and John McCain coming in third at 13 percent of the vote. For the South Carolina Republican primary, John McCain was the big winner by narrowly defeating Mike Huckabee, 33 percent to 30 percent. Fred Thompson came in third at 16 percent, while Romney came in fourth at 15 percent of the vote. So what does all this mean? We have a situation where there are now two emerging front-runners battling it out--Romney and McCain--for the GOP nomination. Granted, Romney has won more states (Michigan, Nevada, Wyoming), than McCain has (New Hampshire, South Carolina), but Romney has not shown himself to be a clear front-runner in a party that has fractured itself along political, economic, and religious fault lines. For example, the evangelicals still do not trust Romney due to his Mormon faith. In South Carolina, Huckabee took 40 percent of the evangelical vote, compared to 27 percent for McCain. Looking at the CBS News exit polling data on religion, Romney was only taking around 11-13 percent of the religious and evangelical voters. The evangelicals made up around 60 percent of the turnout for the GOP primary. So Mitt Romney is going to have a huge problem in courting the evangelical vote, which is especially big in the southern states. And at the moment, this vote is going to both Huckabee and, to a lesser extent, McCain. Romney is going to need to win big in the January 29th Florida primary, if he wants to cement any sort of front-running status before going into the February 5 Super-Duper-Pooper-Scooper-Tuesday. Then again, all the GOP candidates are now staking Florida for their nomination hopes. According to the latest Florida polls from Pollster.com, McCain has a slight lead of an average 23.5 percent, with Rudy Giuliani in second at an average of 19.1 percent, and Romney in a close third at 19 percent. But now look at this graph showing the public opinion trends in Florida for the GOP candidates for 2007:

Graph showing Florida public opinion trends in Florida for GOP presidential race from 2007-2008. From Pollster.com

In late 2007, Giuliani's public opinion poll results have dropped sharply in Florida, from around 30 percent in late 2007 to around 19 percent today. While at the same time, McCain's results have risen sharply, from around 9 percent in late 2007 to 23 percent today. Mitt Romney's poll numbers have been steadily rising from 6 percent in 2007 to around 19 percent today. As Florida voters are starting to look at the current crop of GOP candidates, they are starting to take a fresher look at both McCain and Romney, and are shifting their support away from Giuliani to both McCain and Romney. We are seeing a very fluid race shaping up in Florida. A McCain win in Florida will tip a three-point GOP see-saw (Between Romney, McCain, and Huckabee) back towards the McCain camp as we go into the Super-Duper-Tuesday race. This will result in us not knowing who the front-runner will be until after the February 5th Tuesday vote--or perhaps longer if Huckabee takes the south. It is still anybody's ballgame here.

Now I want to talk about Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee took a strong 30 percent second-place finish behind John McCain's 33 percent of the vote. Fred Thompson came in third with 16 percent of the vote. If Fred Thompson had dropped out of the race before South Carolina, I would say that a good chunk of his support would have migrated over to Huckabee (at least the evangelicals who voted for Thompson). Would that have been enough for Huckabee to win South Carolina over McCain? I can't say. But with Fred Thompson out of the race, Thompson supporters are going to have to choose between Huckabee, McCain, and Romney (I don't think they will support either Ron Paul or Rudy Giuliani). In fact, I would say that in the future southern races, Huckabee could end up getting the former Thompson supporters, which could allow him to win the Deep South states over McCain. We could have distinct regional voting blocs going with the top three candidates, creating a three-way split among the GOP delegates. There still could be a brokered GOP convention.

Fred Thompson drops out of the White House race. Goodbye Grandpa Fred. It has been nice knowing you.

I don't know how Ron Paul got second-place in the Nevada caucus. Not that it really matters much, considering that Paul will never get the GOP nomination. I think that Paul's greatest support is coming from college-age kids, where they like the libertarian streak with Paul, over that of the rest of the candidates. According to CBS News, "Paul has won more votes from Republicans younger than 30 than any other age group. In three of the four contests, people between 18 and 24 were most likely to vote for the Texas congressman." Paul has also been getting some of the independent vote. According to the CBS News entrance poll results for Nevada, Paul received 51 percent of the independent vote, with McCain getting 13 percent of the independents, and Romney getting 12 percent of the independents. I think Paul is picking up a part of the GOP electorate that may be disgusted with the party's over-reliance to the corporate, Big Business greed, and the Religious Rights' social issues extremism. This is a problem that the mainstream candidates can't address, even as they continue to pander to both groups. Ron Paul's 2008 presidential race may just show the future of where the GOP has to go in reinterpreting it's party platform in order to win future presidential races.

And finally, we come to Rudy Giuliani. Rudy didn't do too well, placing sixth in the Nevada caucus with four percent of the vote (Behind Romney, Paul, McCain, Huckabee, and Thompson), and sixth in the South Carolina primary with 2 percent of the vote (Behind McCain, Huckabee, Thompson, Romney, and Paul). Even in the Michigan primary, Giuliani placed sixth with 3 percent of the vote (Behind Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Paul, and Thompson). Ron Paul is getting more votes in Michigan, Nevada, and South Carolina than Giuliani is. But don't fear--this is Mr. 9/11 we're talking about. After his fourth-place finish in New Hampshire (Behind McCain, Romney, and Huckabee), Giuliani has staked his presidential claim in Florida, stomping around the Florida countryside like Ponce de Leon hunting for the Fountain of Youth. Will Giuliani discover his own Fountain of Presidency? He has got a cash-strapped campaign that is not generating much news buzz, is probably not generating the campaign contributions needed, and has ended up in last place (behind Ron Paul) in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina. Rudy Giuliani needs to win big in Florida, if he wants to keep his presidential hopes alive. A second-place finish could allow Giuliani to continue campaigning into Super-Duper Tuesday, but I doubt it would be enough to propel him into a front-runner position that Romney or McCain has. More than likely, a Giuliani win, or second-place finish, would stir the GOP presidential pot even more into confusion. And if Giuliani finishes in third place, or lower, then his campaign is finished. He and Ron Paul can battle it out for last place.

The South Carolina Democratic primary starts this Saturday, January 26th. After that, we've got the Florida primary on Tuesday, January 29th. The Republicans will also start their Hawaii caucus on January 25th, and the Maine caucus on February 1st. Then it will be the Super-Duper-Pooper-Scooper Tuesday, February 5th. If we're ever going to know who the Democratic and Republican front-runners are, that will be the day.