Michigan Primaries
So now yet another Republican has won yet another state. Well, Mitt Romney would remind you that he’s won Wyoming as well, but nobody really counted them anyway. They were yet another state that moved their caucus ahead of February 5th and lost half their delegates and weren’t even given news coverage. Michigan lost half their delegates as well, but Romney took the remaining ones with an 8-point lead over John McCain.
So technically, yes, Mitt Romney has won Wyoming and Michigan, Mike Huckabee won Iowa, and John McCain won New Hampshire.
What does this mean? It’s still a mess.
At this rate, maybe Fred Thompson will win South Carolina and Rudy Giuliani will win Nevada. Who knows? Saturday January 19th will tell us for sure.
As for the Democrats, their primary was of little consequence since the Democratic Party deprived Michigan of its delegates. Barack Obama and John Edwards removed their names from the ballot as per party request. But Hillary Clinton’s name was still on the ballot, handing her an easy win—sort of. You see, Clinton still took only 55% of the vote, running on a ballot with Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd (who’s already dropped out) and Uncommitted.
And Uncommitted got 40% of the vote.
Presumably, these are voters who support Obama and Edwards and wanted to send a protest vote against Clinton. Or maybe they wanted to send a protest vote against everyone.
Unlike the pundits and pollsters, I’m not going to sound stupid and try to tell you why. I’m just going to tell you that with a lackluster turnout for the Democrats, which might have been higher if the primary had actually had an effect, there were enough people who felt strongly enough about Uncommitted to show up and vote for it. And that may not be good news for the Clinton camp.
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