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By James A. Barnes, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008

Sen. John McCain of Arizona took a decisive step toward the Republican presidential nomination on Super Tuesday, winning well over half the delegates at stake in the 21-state bonanza of primaries and caucuses.

And the Republican Party's winner-take-all rules -- which award all of a state's delegates to the candidate who wins a majority or even a plurality of votes cast statewide -- propelled McCain's victory. He swept 198 delegates in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and New York that were allocated on a winner-take-all basis; he won all of Missouri's 58 delegates, another winner-take-all state; he collected 53 from his home state of Arizona.

AP shows him winning 54 of 57 of the Illinois delegates, who are directly elected by the GOP primary voters -- making Illinois, in effect, almost a winner-take-all state.

McCain captured 32 of 38 delegates from Oklahoma, a state that awards the delegates allocated in each congressional district on a winner-take-all basis and the remainder to the winner of the statewide vote. (Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won the other six.)

And California, a state that awards its 170 delegates the same way as Oklahoma, appears to have given McCain his biggest victory of the night. According to the California secretary of state's office, McCain has won or is leading all but two of the state's 53 districts, which would give him 153 of the 159 delegates allocated from congressional districts in addition to the 11 awarded to the statewide winner. At the same time, McCain has won just 42 percent of the total vote in the Golden State.

So with nearly all the votes counted in those nine states, McCain won roughly 45 percent of the total, but he could win 559 of the 574 delegates allocated in those winner-take-all states -- nearly the whole delegate pool.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the runner-up, winning two primaries: his home state of Massachusetts, which allocates delegates in rough proportion to the share of votes a candidate receives, and Utah, which awards all 36 of its delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Romney also fared well in the caucuses, collecting all five states holding them: Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana and North Dakota. These were the top targets for the Romney campaign, along with West Virginia, which Romney lost to Huckabee at the state GOP convention earlier in the day.

But that was the limit of Romney's reach on Super Tuesday. Huckabee won all four of the Southern primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee. And although McCain is still short of the 1,191 delegates needed to claim the Republican nomination, with Romney and Huckabee dividing up the 12 states McCain didn't win, neither was able to amass enough delegates to position himself as a strong challenger to McCain for the GOP crown.

Breaking Down The Demographics
The National Election Pool exit poll -- conducted by Edison/ Mitofsky for AP, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC -- found that McCain managed to win an overall plurality of regular Republicans who voted on Super Tuesday. A combined sample of more than 10,000 voters from the 16 states that held primaries found that 39 percent of those who said that they usually thought of themselves as Republicans backed McCain, compared with 34 percent who sided with Romney and 21 percent who supported Huckabee.

That was key for McCain, because several of his winner-take-all victories came in states that limited participation in their primaries to registered Republicans: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, New York and Oklahoma.

Among self-described independents who voted in the GOP primaries, McCain won 40 percent. Romney was far behind, with 26 percent; 21 percent chose Huckabee.

Among self-described conservatives, who made up close to two-thirds of the Republican Super Tuesday primary electorate, McCain failed to win a plurality. They favored Romney by 38 percent, compared with McCain's 31 percent and Huckabee's 21 percent. McCain's core of support came from self-described moderates, who made up roughly a quarter of the Republican Super Tuesday voters: He won a 54-percent majority of moderates. McCain also collected a majority of self-described liberal Republicans, who counted for roughly one in 10 of the GOP's Super Tuesday voters.

But with his strong base among center-left Republicans, McCain was able to draw votes from conservatives who were not hard-liners. As in previous primary victories, McCain was able to win a plurality of Republican primary voters who described themselves as only "somewhat" conservative. McCain carried that group, 41 percent to 34 percent over Romney. Among Republican primary voters who described themselves as "very conservative," 44 percent voted for Romney and 30 percent supported Huckabee. Only 19 percent backed McCain. But that was enough.

"I think ultimately the Republican Party was willing to give McCain a break on the fact that he's not a dogmatic conservative -- he's a maverick conservative -- in exchange for his competence on waging the war against radical Islam and his character," said GOP media consultant Mike Murphy, who worked for McCain during his 2000 presidential bid. "He was ultimately enough of a conservative."

Indeed, McCain did well among Republican voters who were concerned about national security. Among those who cited terrorism as the most important issue facing the country, 40 percent voted for McCain and 31 percent voted for Romney. Among those who said the war in Iraq was the top priority, 49 percent backed McCain, while just 20 percent sided with Romney and 19 percent backed Huckabee.

Even among the plurality of GOP primary voters who named the economy the most important issue facing the country, McCain did well: Forty-two percent of that group backed him, and 31 percent chose Romney. The former Massachusetts governor did well only among primary voters who said immigration was the top issue facing the country -- about a quarter of the total -- and collected 44 percent to McCain's 27 percent.

And among those primary voters who said that a candidate's leadership and personal qualities were more important to their vote than the candidate's position on the issues, McCain swamped his rivals. Fifty percent backed McCain, compared with 27 percent supporting Romney and 15 percent voting for Huckabee.

Romney's Geographic Downfall
California and Missouri probably broke Romney's back on Super Tuesday. He had pumped some $1.5 million in television advertising (subscription) into the state. Half of it ran in the Los Angeles media market. He also spent two days stumping in California after the last Republican presidential debate and made an eleventh-hour trip back there just before Tuesday's balloting.

That investment did not yield the return Romney had hoped for. McCain leads Romney in all of the top nine vote-producing counties in the state's GOP primary. In Los Angeles and its sprawling suburbs, McCain beat Romney -- although in Orange County, the Arizonan's lead is only about 2 percentage points. With nearly all of the vote counted in San Diego County, McCain is narrowly edging out Romney, 40 percent to 38 percent.

Along the rest of the coast and in the Bay Area, however, McCain crushed Romney. In the state's vast inland and Sacramento Valley, McCain ran a bit behind his statewide average of 44 percent, but Romney could not overtake him there either.

In Missouri, McCain squeaked out a win in a tight three-way contest where his opposition was divided. McCain narrowly carried the St. Louis suburbs over Romney, but the former governor turned the tables by narrowly winning the Kansas City area. McCain lost the middle of the state, dominated by rural communities and small towns to Huckabee, but McCain still managed to finish ahead of Romney on that turf.

Next Steps For McCain
The next batch of primaries could also work to McCain's advantage. Louisiana holds a GOP contest on Feb. 9, and if a candidate can win a majority of the votes cast in that primary, then he will take all 23 of the state's at-large delegates. But if a candidate doesn't reach a majority, those delegates are certified as uncommitted and determined at a state convention later this year. Huckabee might be favored in the state, but, except for his home state of Arkansas, he was unable to crack the 50-percent barrier anywhere in the South on Super Tuesday.

On Feb. 12, primaries will be held in the District of Columbia (with 16 delegates at stake), Maryland (37 delegates) and Virginia (60 delegates). D.C. and Virginia allocate all of their delegates to the winner of the statewide vote. Maryland awards its delegates under congressional district and statewide winner-take-all rules -- and these are exactly the kinds of contests that gave McCain his big win on Super Tuesday.