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February 9, 2008 7:19 PM
Huckabee leads McCain in GOP caucus
Posted by David Postman
SeattlePoliticore writers Charles Cadwallader and Will Mari are still holding out at the state GOP headquarters. They sent this:
In the past the Republican Party has never offered day of reporting for the results of their caucuses. So far 37.1% of the votes have been reported, still waiting on King, Pierce and Benton counties; the former two making up a majority of the state population.Huckabee 26.4% of the vote, McCain has 22.9%, Paul has 20.3%, Romney has 18%, uncommitted has 10.7% and other sits at 1.7% as of 7:00 pm.
Raw delegate totals from the precincts are as follows:
Huckabee : 1828
McCain: 1580
Paul: 1400
Romney: 1246
Other: 116
Uncommitted: 742
I think this means we're even more likely to see another McCain visit before the Feb. 19 primary. This race is still alive.
Neither McCain or Huckabee had much of a caucus organizing effort here. Both campaigns told me in recent weeks that Mitt Romney was the best organized for today's caucus. His departure came late enough that no one could have been able to organize many of those Romney folks by today.
I just spoke with Pastor Joe Fuiten. He heads Huckabee’s volunteer effort here.
“I think the line that was quoted is true. The press keeps wanting to bury Mr. Huckabee but he has had more resurrections than Jesus. They keep burying him and he just keeps rising back up.”
Fuiten said he will make a pitch to the campaign that Huckabee visit Washington before the Feb. 19 primary. Huckabee’s wife, Janet, visited this week, doing more than 15 media appearances, Fuiten said.
“I started calling on the morning after he did so well on Super Tuesday and said, ‘Give us some help out here.’ They put no money into Washington. Zero; no staff, no advertising.”
Fuiten said Huckabee likely did well here because unlike in some other states there has been fairly wide support for the candidate among evangelical leaders. And with Romney out of the race, he said, there is no one left to attack Huckabee on the stump and call him a liberal.
“He’s no liberal in any way, unless you call liberal building roads and funding education, and I don’t.”
The King County Republican Party just released results of 87% of its precincts reporting. This could close the gap for McCain, though we don't yet know what else is remaining statewide.
Mike Huckabee - 640 (19.25%)John McCain - 1,057 (31.8%)
Ron Paul - 612 (18.41%)
Mitt Romney - 484 (14.56%)
Uncommitted - 520 (15.64%)
Others - 11 (0.33%)
Posted by Ebenezer
7:54 PM, Feb 09, 2008
I don't understand - the media's called the nomination for McCain. Doesn't that mean he's supposed to sweep today's primaries, instead of get swept by Huckabee?
Posted by ajMM
8:02 PM, Feb 09, 2008
For the Republican results, are the numbers you quote the number of individual votes, or rather the number of candidate-pledged precinct delegates elected to go to the next district-level caucuses? If the latter, is there any way to get the raw individual vote counts?
Posted by Charles Cadwallader
9:04 PM, Feb 09, 2008
Hey ajMM,
Those are the numbers and percentages of the delegates that were pledged to each candidate.
They may not be the individual vote count but the percentages are the raw data for the overall vote count.
Posted by stink
9:29 PM, Feb 09, 2008
Interesting that people aren't getting behind their nominee.
Posted by thekaj
9:19 AM, Feb 10, 2008
I'd definitely be interested to see if the GOP will release final numbers on how many actual people attended their caucuses. The Democrats have been more than willing to broadcast that almost twice as many people attended their caucuses than in 2000 (which was also a high turnout year). Makes me wonder if this is yet another state where the number of people voting Democratic absolutely dwarfed those voting Republican.
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Posted by Independent Republican
7:28 PM, Feb 09, 2008
Notice how many people have chosen Romney. Most of the people at my caucus were listing their first choise. They also said if the vote was between McCain and Huckabee ... it is a simple decision: McCain or anyone against Huckabee.