With 94% of the vote counted in Florida, there have been roughly 1,583,000 votes cast. In the 2008 Republican primary in Florida, roughly 1,950,000 votes were cast. There’s probably about 100,000 votes left to count tonight, but we can already see that despite a growing population, approximately 300,000 fewer Republicans voted tonight than four years ago. Even so, Romney is going to wind up with about 130,000 more votes than McCain received when he won the Sunshine State. McCain won with 36% of the vote, while Romney is currently holding steady at forty-seven percent.
Clearly, this was a strong showing by Mitt Romney. But the overall turnout numbers are definitely depressed. I think that’s what we’d expect to see from this shitty cast of candidates, but it’s also probably a result of the saturation-level of blisteringly negative advertising. As if Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul were not ridiculous enough on their own, Floridians were reminded two hundred times a day.
What would have me worried is if people were coming out of the woodwork to vote in these primaries, but, so far, that has not been the case.
It has been a great night for Romney, but every time he’s gotten in this position before, the Republican base has regurgitated him like a sour apple. There are still some unanswered questions. Is Ron Paul completely finished or has he built an infrastructure to succeed in the upcoming caucus states? Is he lying like a snake in the grass, or is his 7% performance tonight more indicative of his prospects? If there is one more anti-Romney backlash in store, will it go to Santorum or Gingrich? How much longer will Santorum soldier on?
The common wisdom is that Romney will win the Nevada caucuses easily, and I share that expectation. But if it doesn’t happen, this thing could still stay interesting. Personally, I don’t mind Gingrich and Paul continuing on taking their shots at Romney (although Paul doesn’t do much of that), but unless they’re going to win somewhere, I’m ready for Romney to wrap this up. I don’t want him getting organized in every state in the union. Ding him up a little more, but after Super Tuesday, leave the organizing to the professionals on the Democratic side. We don’t want the competition.
