Super Tuesday Shows Races Still Up For Grabs

While the Tuesday primaries and caucuses moved Hillary Clinton and John McCain closer to their goals of becoming their respective parties’ nominees for the November election, the largest one day primary of the race was far from decisive. When the dust settles and all of the delegates have been awarded, there will still be a race to be run for both parties leading up to their conventions.

The big surprise of the night had to be former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and the distinct loser of the night former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Supporters of Romney including conservative talk show hosts Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh got quite the surprise as voters rejected their “true conservative” for Mike Huckabee who won convincingly over Romney in most areas considered to be core conservative Republican strongholds such as Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. In comments made to his supporters Huckabee turned the “two-man race” rhetoric of Romney on him saying that there was indeed a two man race and it was Huckabee , not Romney, who was locked in it with frontrunner John McCain. The reality of the night was that the race for the Republican nomination has now truly become a three-man race.

The night was also somewhat disappointing for Senator McCain who had hoped to have a much more dominant showing and finish the night as the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. While most pundits still predict that McCain will be the Republican nominee, there is a little less certainty to their predictions. Based on CNN delegate projections it is likely that while McCain will have a substantial lead in the delegate count he will only be about halfway to the 1191 delegates he will need to get the nomination.

On the Democratic side it was a night of close races and not so close races. In the home states of Obama and Clinton, the hometown candidates won big while in some more battleground states the races were much tighter. Notably, it seemed from early polling that Obama managed to make inroads with Caucasian male voters while Clinton lost ground with African Americans across the board. The swing vote for Senator Clinton seemed to be Caucasian women and Latinos who leaned heavily towards Clinton. In states like Arizona Clinton won handily while Obama took Alabama and Georgia easily. The often presidential predictor Missouri went to Senator Obama in a tight race that came down to the wire with the city of St. Louis being a major factor in the outcome for the state.

The big prize of the night, California, was called early for both Senators McCain and Clinton with the call being made with less than 20% of precincts reporting. In the final election night tally for both the Democrats and the Republicans it was a mixed bag with the winners of the more populous states not winning the overall majority of the states holding primaries. Senators McCain and Clinton both took a little more than a third of the total states up for grabs in the day’s contests while both picking up more delegates than their rivals.

With nothing really decided by the Super Tuesday primaries it is on to the next set of primaries for the candidates which will occur in just four days. Armed with wins and some momentum to talk about each candidate will have to continue to focus on the upcoming primaries leaving the big contest to wait for contestants to be named later. As it stands now, one or both of the major party nominations may not be known until the respective party conventions. As the race gets closer to the end, if things get tighter, it very well could come down to the also-ran candidates’ delegates and the super delegates held by members of the parties’ upper echelon to decide who will be the Democratic and Republican nominees for the November election.

Troy Wilson-Ripsom - Staff Writer | Give your feedback on this article.

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