Super Duper Pooper Scooper Tuesday analysis--The Republicans

Now let us go with the analysis of the Republican results on Super Duper Tuesday. First, here is the New York Times map of the Republican results for Super Tuesday:

Map showing Republican presidential candidates' results for Super Tuesday races. From New York Times.

And here is The Washington Post graph the overall scorecard of states won for both the Democratic and Republican primaries. Look closely at the Republican scorecard:

Graph showing overall scorecard of states won by the candidates of both political parties. From The Washington Post

This is a fascinating map because we are seeing the three candidates taking three distinct regions of the country. First, we have John McCain starting to take both coasts, with California in the west, and New York, New Jersey, Connecticut Delaware, and South Carolina in the east. He has a strong foothold with the Rustbelt region with wins in Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. McCain has created a split between the Deep South and the Midwest with his wins in Missouri, and Oklahoma. McCain has also gained a foothold in the Southwest with a win in his home state of Arizona. In the Deep South, Mike Huckabee has resurrected his campaign with wins in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Huckabee's first win in Iowa give him a foothold to extending his campaign into South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. What does this leave Mitt Romney? Romney has wins in the Rocky Mountain states, and the Great Lake states of Minnesota, and Michigan. Romney could use his Michigan win to extend his campaign into Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, however Romney will be butting heads with McCain for those states. And finally, Texas could become a big fight between McCain courting the Hispanic vote, and Huckabee courting the evangelicals.

So what does all this mean? All three candidates are winning distinct regions of the country. McCain is winning the coasts, Huckabee is winning the Deep South, and Romney has the Rocky Mountain states. We are looking at a Republican Party that has three distinct regions here. The coastal states may contain more moderate conservatives that value McCain's "maverick" status as a conservative who also has independent views contrary to the GOP. In the Deep South, there is the evangelicals, who value social and religious issues above anything else--and they see Mike Huckabee as a true conservative who shares in their values. Mitt Romney has a problem. His Mormon faith creates a suspicion among the evangelicals in the Deep South, and he really hasn't shown himself as a moderate, or independent, thinker for the coastal states. So Romney is left with the Rocky Mountain and Great Lake states. At this point, I'm not sure where Romney can hunt for voters that share in his campaign ideology. In order for his campaign to survive, Romney is probably going to have to invest money and resources into delegate-rich states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and perhaps Virginia and Maryland. But considering the momentum that McCain has in winning both the big states of New York and California, I'm not sure if Romney can win the nomination. But what could happen in this primary is that both Romney and Huckabee control strong factions of the Republican Party with these wins, causing problems for McCain in unifying the GOP.

This brings up John McCain. McCain had two big wins with New York and California. McCain now leads in the delegate count with 680 delegates, verses Romney's 270 delegates, and Huckabee's 176 delegates. So McCain is the clear Republican front-runner here. The problem for McCain is that he has huge segments of the Republican Party that do not like him, or they don't trust him. Consider this detail from ABC News:

On Super Tuesday, exit polling showed McCain narrowly lost conservatives to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, gaining 40 percent support among Arizona conservatives to Romney's 43 percent. However, those who considered themselves "very conservative" went for Romney by a much wider margin: 53 percent support for Romney to McCain's 22 percent support.

McCain's conservative support is really with the moderate conservatives. Looking at the exit polling, McCain is having trouble selling to the "very conservative" voters, who are choosing Romney over McCain. If you look at some of the Super Tuesday races here, you will find that if you add Romney's and Huckabee's vote percentages, the total will be higher than McCain's winning percentage. These states are California, Delaware, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Now does this mean that if either Romney or Huckabee had dropped out of the race before Super Tuesday, that the voters would have chosen the other candidate besides McCain? Not really. But I do find it interesting that the vote opposing McCain have been split between both Romney and Huckabee. But what this does tell me is that McCain is going to have to work hard at convincing the evangelicals and hard-lined conservatives to support his nomination in the general election--otherwise, these two groups will probably stay home in protest.

There will probably be more to come with this fascinating election.