Even though he lost in Virginia and Maryland he doesn’t have a chance of winning he is doing us a big service by staying in this way because he is our way of demonstrating that we aren’t happy with McCain. Now McCain knows that he will have a tough time in VA in November. He sees that conservatives still don’t think he’s conservative and maybe this will be incentive for him to move to the right during the general and to select a conservative running mate.
How much of Huckabee’s vote was disgruntled conservatives?
Mike Huckabee benefited from a strong turnout of born-again evangelical Christians in Virginia’s primary. Thirty-seven percent of Virginia Republican voters were born-again evangelical Christians. They voted 63 percent for Huckabee and just 28 percent for John McCain. In Maryland, there were fewer evangelical voters and they supported Huckabee over McCain by a somewhat smaller margin.
Among Republicans, Huckabee won the votes of 64 percent of Virginians and half of Marylanders who said they were looking for a candidate who shared their values.
Sixty-five percent of voters in Virginia’s Republican primary called themselves conservatives. Mike Huckabee won half of their votes, including two-thirds of those who called themselves “very conservative.” In Maryland, conservatives were a similar share of the voters, but McCain did better than Huckabee among them, 44 percent to 36 percent. Mitt Romney, who has suspended his campaign, got 9 percent of conservatives in Maryland, Ron Paul, 7 percent.
McCain won the votes of 70 percent of moderates in Virginia and 74 percent in Maryland. McCain won about half of those who called themselves “somewhat conservative” in both states.
Forty-nine percent of Republican voters in Virginia said McCain’s policies were not conservative enough; 41 percent said that in Maryland.
Republican voters in Virginia who said they frequently listened to conservative talk radio voted 51 percent for Huckabee, while non-listeners voted 57 percent for McCain. But in Maryland, frequent listeners still supported McCain over Huckabee, 49 percent to 28 percent. In both states, the more often people listened to conservative talk radio, the less likely they were to vote for McCain.
Who says that talk radio doesn’t have an effect?