2008 South Carolina Republican Primary Results Map

As you can see, McCain managed to win Columbia, Charleston, and Myrtle Beach areas—the last two by large margins—while Huckabee won the Greenville-Spartanburg area as well as the more socially conservative northern counties, though not by the tremendous margins he would have needed. Exit polls suggest that Fred Thompson fared quite well among "very conservative" voters that might have otherwise gone to Huckabee.

Comments

[ikl]

I get the sense that we are headed for a McCain - Romney showdown on Super Tuesday.

Guiliani could throw everything into choas again with a win Florida. He is dangerous on Super Tuesday because he could win in NY, CT, and NJ and get lots and lots of delegates even if he gets killed in the south and midwest - then there would be a real threat of a brokered convention. But I don't think that he will win Florida. Especially if Thompson drops out (I'm guessing that Thompson voters are not likely to go to Guiliani).

Huckabee is still dangerous in the south and perhaps the Great Plains, but he hasn't been able to break out of his base of very religious conservative white Protestants and if he didn't really do so in SC, there isn't much reason to believe that he'll do so later.

So that leaves McCain and Romney as the only two national candidates left. I tend to give Romney the edge in a head to head matchup given (a) the number of closed primaries coming up, (b) McCain's lukewarm support among conservatives and the Republican establishment, and (c) Romney's ability to write himself very, very large checks.

But that analysis assumes a two way race. It is possible that Huckabee could peel enough social conservatives away from Romney to throw certain states to McCain. It is also unknown how many Republicans will refuse to vote for a Morman even if he is the only viable candidate who tries to appeal to social conservatives - I have heard that this could be a problem for Romney in the south. This could give McCain a winning combination of southern states plus some of the blue states in the northeast and west coast. It is really hard to say.

So the Republican race is still very, very interesting!