The Race Heats Up

Romney pulls one out in Michigan. He won by 9 percentage points over McCain. However,
this doesn’t seem to have had as much impact on the race as Iowa and New Hampshire. If Romney had lost, it would have been a disaster for him. Winning keeps him in the race. And by winning it means there is no front runner in the race.

It is on to South Carolina where McCain, Huckabee and Thompson (remember him) are all competing. The Romney campaign is making a slight effort there but seems to be concentrating on Nevada. A poll on the Post web site shows McCain with 26 percent to Huckabee’s 23 percent. Take the poll with a grain of salt after what happened in New Hampshire. The margin of error is not shown so essentially this is a dead heat.

Waiting in the wings and spending all his time in Florida is Rudi Giuliani. If he has any hope of getting the nomination, he’s going to have to win in Florida and probably win big. Right now according to Real Clear Politics McCain is in the lead in Florida.

So this means that Super Tuesday on February 5 or Tsunami Tuesday as some in the media are calling it takes on huge significance. But the notion that one candidate will emerge as a front runner after that date seems less and less likely. If you have three to four viable candidates (Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain and Romney) it means the vote is going to be split. So each candidate could win a couple of states.

Or you could have someone who doesn’t win any states but comes in second in enough places (a very close second being even better) that he could do better than a candidate that actually won a state. Considering 24 states have primaries or caucuses on February 5 including such states as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York to name a few of the big contests. Delegates are starting to become more and more important. It seems very unlikely that the Republican contest will be resolved by the morning of February 6. It is possible there might be one or two fewer candidates but the race will go on.

It means the following week when D.C., Maryland and Virginia vote these contests will be very important.

It also seems to me that the Democrats will in all likelihood be in the same position as the Republicans but the contest will be between Clinton and Obama. I just don’t see how Edwards gets any traction to win. Even if he takes a state or two on Super Tuesday, I think it will be too little too late.

As we say in my family we’ll see.