The conventional wisdom is that Huckabee is slipping because he has not expanded beyond his evangelical base. That’s wrong. He’s losing because he’s not even winning his evangelical base.
In Michigan, Huckabee won only 29% of evangelicals, less even than the Mormon Mitt Romney. Perhaps that was a fluke related to Romney’s semi-home-state advantage? Nope. The same thing happened in New Hampshire, where he won 28% of evangelicals, tying with McCain, who’s supposedly loathed by the religious base.
Evangelicals were a substantial bloc in Michigan – 39% of the voters. If he’d done as well among religious Christians in Michigan as he had in Iowa, he would have come close to winning Michigan.
Why isn’t Huck winning evangelicals?