Hey McCain, Give em a Buckeye and Milk it for all it's Worth!

A memo from Rick Davis of the McCain campaign states:

Until John McCain secures 1,191 delegates, we must campaign aggressively for the Republican nomination, and that requires additional resources in some of the most populous states in the country. We cannot turn our attention to the Democrats and their enormous war chests until this nomination is secure, and we cannot accomplish that goal without your additional help.

Okay, so, this is a fundraising letter - but I do think there is a misconception here, in my opinion.
That is - there's no reason McCain can't run against the Democrats and for the nomination at the same time.

It is true that Texas is a big state with a lot of delegates that McCain will win in November anyway, and so wouldn't need to spend much time there. But there's also some oppurtunities McCain can take advantage of while he's fighting to get the rest of the delegates he needs to make the nomination official.

For some of the states coming up, such as Vermont and Rhode Island, McCain is a pretty sure bet to win the nomination and yet it is unlikely, given recent trends, for the GOP to win there in November. On the other hand there are some places which McCain can build up enthusiasm for his nomination at the same time as he seeks out voters for the general.

This month, the next big state primary is Wisconsin. A few weeks later is Ohio. In these two cases we have states that McCain needs to appeal to not in order to win the nomination contest, but also because these are "swing" states. Considering trends in recent elections, in order for John McCain to win the Presidency he will need to win one or the other. Bush lost Wisconsin both in 2000 and 2004 by a margin of less than 0.5 %. Bush won Ohio both times by less than 4 %. Since Ohio is worth 20 electoral votes to Wisconsin's 10, Ohio is more crucial. Still, Wisconsin could prove vital as well, especially if Iowa or another state goes Democratic. And the fact that McCain has worked closely with Sen. Feingold may help swing independents. Ohio and Wisconsin are both real possibilities for McCain to win in November, but neither is a sure bet right now. It would make sense to take this opportunity to focus on these two states and reach out to general election voters while at the same time reaching out to the Republican base. Both independents and Republicans are able to vote in the primaries of Ohio and Wisconsin, and McCain will need the support of both groups in order to win in the general.

GOP Delegate contests - the month ahead

2/16 Guam caucus....number of delegates= 9 strong McCain
2/19 Wisconsin primary............................40 strong McCain
..........Washington primary.........................19 leans McCain
2/23 American Samoa caucus.....................9 strong McCain
..........Northern Mariana caucus..................9 tossup/unknown
..........Virgin Islands caucus..........................9 leans McCain
2/24 Puerto Rico caucus........(WTA)........23 strong McCain
3/4 Ohio primary........................................88 leans McCain
....Texas (combined caucus/primary)...140 leans McCain
... .Rhode Island primary............................20 strong McCain
.........Vermont primary ........(WTA).........17 strong McCain
3/11 Mississippi primary...........................39 tossup/unknown

total delegates at stake in next month: 422
delegates McCain needs to have a majority: 1191 - 827 = 364

Some have argued Huckabee needs to drop out for the sake of the party. Others have argued Huckabee's continued presence will end up making McCain a stronger candidate in the general.
I'm not completely convinced either way. The one thing that's clear is that McCain really needs to win consistently and decisively in the major primary contests for him to be the undisputed, official Republican nominee by this time next month. The next primary after that isn't until Pennsylvania on April 22!

Californians Find Themselves in McCain Territory

It looks like McCain struck gold all across the State - from San Diego to San Fransisco to Sacramento to Del Norte.

Take a look at these maps - only three counties went for Romney, and in over a dozen counties the margin of victory for McCain was in the thousands. Romney's biggest margin of victory was 662 in Shasta County.

Of course, the delegates are awarded by congressional district, not by counties - but it seems McCain is ahead in 51 out of 53.

So out of California's 170 delegates, McCain will win about 164.

And this in a closed primary, McCain's statewide margin over Romney is 8 percent.

The CNN exit poll indicates, surprisingly, that McCain only carried one-third of Lations, but almost two-thirds of Asian-Americans. I would have expected McCain to do better among Latinos than among the general population of Republicans, but this doesn't seem to be the case. However, McCain did still place first among Latinos, and Huckabee came in second. Among Asian-Americans, Giuliani - who dropped out of the race last week - did better than Romney.

Less than half of California Republican primary voters believe in deporting illegal immigrants. Three-fourths of the primary voters were White non-Latinos, and they didn't flock to Romney's anti-"amnesty" position. San Diego and Imperial, right on the border, went for McCain - dashing Romney's hopes of cashing in on his embrace of the Tancredo wing of the party in a place he might of expected resentment toward immigrants. Even as conservatives rightly are concerned about the rule of law, it seems that - right here on the border - most are not driven by the hate that characterizes the rhetoric of pundits who live far removed from the problem.

Huckabee steals middle-class southern evangelical votes from rich northern Mormon?

It's driving me nuts. The MSM keeps repeating the same old trope. Apparently, they still believe that Christian conservatives are uneducated and easy to command. And the Romney camp and his pals at Clear Channel are feeding this idea to the media, suggesting that Huckabee supporters are just stupid fodder for McCain's campaign and ought to rally around their annointed resurrected Reagan, Mitt Romney.

I just saw on CNN Anderson Cooper asking Democratic strategist Donna Brazille if Huckabee's presence in the race is hurting Romney's chances in the South. (As though this liberal Democrat has some special insight into the minds of the conservative Republican electorate?) She of course gave the oft-repeated conventional wisdom without any real data top back it up.

But I keep wondering - how many people do these media political elites even know who is voting for Huckabee? Of course they probably don't know any because Huckabee's stronghold is not in the D.C. beltway and the Manhattan press offices. These are the people who couldn't imagine in 1980 that anyone was voting for Reagan because of course they didn't know anyone who was voting for Reagan. Well as long as we are peddling in anecdotes, I know a number of people who are Huckabee supporters and none of them are excited in the least about Romney.

Folks, there isn't just some abstract "conservative" vote out there that Romney and Huckabee are splitting. All four of the GOP candidates are conservatives of one stripe or another. Ron Paul is a paleolibertarian Robert Taft conservative. McCain is a progressive traditionalist - a conservative in intuition and values rather than ideology - a virtue warrior rather than a culture warrior. Huckabee is a reformist anti-globalist social conservative. And Romney is a white bread technocrat institutionalist conservative. The conservatism of Huckabee is in spirit at least as different from the conservatism of Romney as it is from McCain or Ron Paul.

Medved notes:

To believe that Huck and Mitt are dividing conservatives, you have to believe that Huckabee is a conservative --- which Romney, Limbaugh, Igraham, and countless others have been denying (stridently and strenuously) for months. . . Either the elite commentators were wrong when they labeled Huckabee a “liberal populist,” or they are wrong now when they say he’s stealing conservative votes from Romney. The only other alternative is that they view conservative voters as just too stupid to see Huckabee for what he really is.

Patrick Ruffini writes:

The Romney campaign’s February 5th math is simple: move all the voters from the Huckabee pile onto theirs and claim a majority of conservatives. Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple.

To this Brainster replies:

What do you mean, not simple? Just move the pile! Now note what's not said at all; what the Huckabee pile is going to receive in return; one suspects that it's the chance to help Mitt Romney over the hump. Now of course, it should come as no news to anybody that Mike Huckabee isn't interested in this game. He has on many occasions expressed his admiration for Senator McCain, and his disdain for Mitt Romney.

And it's not just Huckabee who prefers McCain to Romney. Huckabee supporters seem to feel the same way. These numbers show three-fifths of Huckabee voters having a favorable view of McCain, while less than two-fifths have a favorable view of Romney.

Ruffini also notes the cultural and geographical difference in the Romney and Huckabee vote:

The problem with this analysis is that I’ve seen no evidence that Huckabee voters would go to Romney. On a county level, the Romney and Huckabee votes are negatively correlated, with Romney representing the conservative side of the Chamber of Commerce/Rotary Club vote and not really showing outsized strength with Evangelicals.

I've been looking at this sort of county level results at my new political geography blog. In states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina, Romney has done his best in the more urban areas, and Huckabee has done best in rural areas. McCain has done well in both urban and rural areas, among both lower and upper middle class, among both young and old. On a demographic level, it appears that McCain actually bridges the constituencies of the older and white-collar Romney voters and the younger and blue-collar Huckabee enthusiasts.

If we had excluded Huckabee from this race, its possible Fred Thompson could have gained some real ground in the Bible-belt deep South. But to expect that this would be the case for Romney is only slightly more realistic than the idea of Mormons voting en masse for Huckabee.

Is John McCain's nomination inevitable? No, it's not. It's possible that Romney will win the largest share of California's delegates. But McCain has locked up the Northeast (sans Massachusetts), and Romney looks like he's behind both McCain and Huckabee in every state south of the Mason-Dixon line or with a central time zone. Romney's road to the nominattion depends on a few closed caucuses along with his support from Money, Mormons, Michigan, and - maybe - Massachusetts. It's not impossible , but- as Anna Marie Cox points out*- it requires a bit of mental gymnastics.

*h/t ENHQ