Quote from Cache Landing:
On the GOP side things came out pretty much as expected although I had thought that Huckabee would barely pull off a win in SC. I sure Mitt had hoped the battle between Huck and Mac in SC was a little closer, causing a few more delegates to go Huck's way.
In any case, the SC polls were pretty much spot on. Must be quite disappointing for Huckabee though. He was supposed to have this populist movement going for him and was supposed to gain a ton of momentum coming out of SC. In the end he only ended up getting 5 delegates.
Both Mitt and Mac have exceeded my expectations thus far. I expected Rudy to put a better fight in Nevada, but it seems he is in free-fall and he isn't even polling ahead in Florida anymore.
I thought evangelicals would carry Huck to a win in SC.
Interesting things taken from Nevada entrance polls.
- Huck still carried an amazingly disproportionate number of evangelicals.
- Mac carried a good chunk of the Latino vote, most likely because of his favorable stance toward amnesty. The interesting thing here though, is that Romney has a very different and opposing stance on amnesty but still won a huge majority of the Latino vote.
- Talk about identity politics. Romney got 95% of the Mormon vote. Lucky for him, Mormons represent a larger voting group in Nevada than any other religion.
Some things to see from South Carolina.
- Mac got the older voters, while Huck got the younger ones.
- Huck didn't do as well amongst southern evangelicals as had been expected.
- African Americans only made up 2% of GOP vote even though the state is 30% black.
Current GOP delegate counts
Romeny -- 46% ; 72 delegates
McCain -- 25% ; 38
Huckabee -- 19% ; 29
Thompson - 5% ; 8
Paul -- 4% ; 6
Giuliani -- 1% ; 2