Results Coming In

The one surprise so far to me is that Huckabee is winning many of the Southern states. I figured he would win a few but he's doing better than I thought.

Outside of that, it's pretty much as expected with McCain doing well in the northeast and a couple of centeral/southern midwestern states plus Arizona and Romney doing well in Massachusetts and the northern midwest and looking good as we go west.

I'm still trying to process the meaning of all this data, but the thought does occur to me that Huckabee could possibly be helping Romney get past Super Tuesday intact, in that McCain will be more limited in the number of delegates he will get today, especially if Romney can win California (results are just starting to come in from CA) and much of the rest of the West. As long as McCain is not too far ahead, then we will have to look ahead to the upcoming states, and it won't be over yet.

On the other hand, since McCain and Huckabee have tipped their hand and we know they are in collusion, a "brokered convention" would seem likely to go to the McCain-Huckabee ticket that I strongly suspect is already pledged. That is, if conservatives will put up with that. If this view of things holds through the rest of the counting tonight, the story line for Romney may be the need to consolidate conservative support through the remaining primaries to prevent the moderates/liberals in the party from taking the nomination this way.