Does Huckabee upset McCain in Virginia tomorrow?

[saltpoint]

Poll question: Does Huckabee upset McCain in Virginia tomorrow?

[MADem]

1. There's a LOTTA Navy in VA...both down Norfolk way, and up by the Pentagon. NT

[saltpoint]

2. True. But the ground feels as if it's shifting down in the Old Dominion

toward Huckabee.

[MADem]

7. Well, I haven't been down there in several months, so I can't say I have a feel for the joint

these days.

It better shift in a hurry, I guess!

I think McCain will take it, but who knows, really?

[saltpoint]

8. True again -- there's a big "if" hovering over the GOP these days.

It is kind of staggering to consider how pathetically weak their field is this year.

[malletgirl02]

3. I agree

Yeah VA is heavily military. It should be a fairly easy win for McCain.

[Universitario]

4. Yippie, he will only be down by 400+ delegates! n/t

[saltpoint]

9. Hi, Universitario. Huck's a long way back in delegates, but McCain is

increasingly demonstrably vulnerable.

There's no one backing McCain's back, so to speak, and Huckabee whupped him pretty good this weekend -- in at least 2 states, maybe 3.

What I was thinking of was McCain's appeal to GOP voters if he keeps getting embarrassed by Huckabee.

[Universitario]

15. Well, McCain won 3 of 5 states is what I heard

Although Huckabee got all the delegates in Kansas, I believe, because it's a winner-take-all state.

[saltpoint]

24. I'm kind of stupified at the arrogance of the Washington State GOP

top guy. This Esser fellow. I'm not sure what happened, and I'm no fan of Mike Huckabee, but from the standpoint of a lay observer, it really looks to me like the Washington vote count in the GOP race stunk to high heaven.

[JI7]

5. who can vote in the GOP Primary ?

i think Dems is open to indies . if that's the case with GOP then it could help Mccain along with Military/Veteran votes.

if not, the strong evangelical influence in the GOP may be too much .

[saltpoint]

6. Good observations. I'm wondering if indies will go for Obama,

diluted McCain's support enough for Huck's surge to overtake him.

[BlackVelvet04]

10. I don't know if the evangelical vote will be big enough

for an upset or not. He's picking up a lot of support in areas of VA.....hard call.

[saltpoint]

11. Hi, BlackVelvet04. Yes. I agree. It is a harder call than it first

seemed.

Huckabee is doing better than expected lately, McCain not nearly as well as he needs to, and the Far Right distrusts them both!

[BlackVelvet04]

12. Hi, Old Crusoe....

how are you tonight?

Huckabee has garnered a lot of support in the Lynchburg/Roanoke area (Falwell territory) and also in the Virginia Beach area (Pat Robertson country). If should be interesting tomorrow. We're supposed to have some bad weather so turnout may be lower than originally anticipated but I don't know who that would favor.

[saltpoint]

14. I'm doin' pretty good. We've got Gordon Lightfoot's "All the Lovely

Ladies" on the stereo and the heater cranked up fill tilt.

And DU on the conputer screen!

I have some Dem Party pals in western VA. They agree with you on the Lynchburg/Roanoke support for Huckabee. They think he won't get more than a dozen votes n Blacksburg, but just outside the Blacksburg town limits, they say things drop off sharply, and he's got considrable support there.

They say their immediate chums in that area are a bit spread out, but in the SW towns it's kinds of a Clinton/Obama split among Dem voters.

[BlackVelvet04]

20. I wouldn't think he would have a lot of support in the

Blacksburg town limits.

I don't have a good read on the Clinton/Obama split in the local area at all. The best I can guess is that it's black voters/white men for Obama, white women and hispanics for Clinton. The wild card in this area is the retirees from up north. Lots of transplants because our housing is so much cheaper.

Are your pals VA Tech students?

[saltpoint]

23. One is faculty, one editorial adjunct the school's collateral clients.

It's been a rough year down there for those folks with the shooting and all.

[BlackVelvet04]

25. Yes, it has.....

my niece had a friend killed at Tech in that shooting. It was a very sad time for the whole area as all of us had friends or family at Tech.

[saltpoint]

28. It was interesting that the campus figure who did such a vigorous,

persuasive job of healing the campus community was Nikki Giovanni -- a poet.

I think of Rudy Giuliani in the wake of 9/11 with his damn bullhorn and then Giovanni at Virginia Tech, armed with only her poems.

It was one of the few uplifting moments in the wake of that very sad day in Blacksburg.

[Zynx]

13. If their Louisiana Primary is any indication their turnout will be light.

Huckabee could pull the upset.

[saltpoint]

17. I think he may, too, Zynx.

Not sure. Other posters here throw up insightful cautions, but the little elves are whispering, "Huckabee...Huckabee..."

[HughMoran]

16. No way Huckster makes up 11 points in one day.

[saltpoint]

21. The current SurveyUSA polling shows over the past 72 hours,

McCain has lost 9 points and Huckabee has gained 12.

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=4b5bca0f-bbc7-4c45-9f5c-66e668c18b76

You may be right about the one-day window. But it would depend on the rate of erosion of support for McCain versus the rate of surge in support for Huckabee.

The conditions are ripe for a classic upset tomorrow in Virginia.

[Zynx]

27. Primary elections are unusually volatile.

Turnout matters so much in primary elections that the most committed supporters can tip the balance over the more apathetic.

[saltpoint]

29. Agree.

:hi: :thumbsup:

[HughMoran]

33. I think turnout answers the possibility of upset as good as any other reason

I'd be surprised if McCain people are taking his inevitable victory for granted at this point, so they may turnout in higher numbers tomorrow. Not that I wouldn't like to see the Huckster upset him tomorrow :D

[Hippo_Tron]

18. Yep and I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse

Huckleberry is showing that McVain has serious problems among the base of the party that might not otherwise be apparent if he weren't beating him in late primaries.

Huckleberry's staying in the race may make it harder for the GOP to eventually unite behind McVain.

The other possibility is that he may have not noticed this problem with the base if Huckleberry hadn't pointed it out for him.

[saltpoint]

19. Excellent points. I think you've found all the nails jutting out and hit

them all on their heads.

Yes. McCain has some difficult going ahead, and Huckabee is the catalyst for it, one way or the other.

[Hippo_Tron]

32. McVain has to keep the coalition together and that's how he will lose

Bush won in 2004 because key wedge issues for the GOP, immigration in particular, were not in the debate. Bush was able to stay on message which was basically "terra terra terra, gay marriage, terra" and Kerry's strategists had no shot of getting him off message because the family values shit made sure the base turned out and terrorism trumped everything else for the independents.

What McVain will quickly find is that there is no message that he can stay on that will keep the coalition together that Bush won with in 2004. If the Democratic strategists have any brains whatsoever they will be able to bait McVain into doing and saying stupid thing after stupid thing after stupid thing while he tries to appeal both to the base and to moderates and independents.

It also doesn't take a genius to know that he will attempt to paint Hillary as unable to be commander-in-chief because she's a woman or Obama as unable to be commander-in-chief because he's inexperienced. If I were advising McCain I'd tell him that instead of doing that he should do something that the Democrats aren't expecting. But I think Karl Rove is firmly convinced that divide and conquer will work again and that is what we'll see.

[saltpoint]

35. I think you're right that Rovian divide-and-conquer will be the chief

strategy.

But right now, McCain's nomination is wobbly. He's in the lead, he's got the big delegate count, and the media more or less like him still. But this half-assed moron from Arkansas is outflanking him on several fronts. Maybe not enough to beat him for the nom, but more than enough to expose him as a confused, slow-witted Mr. Magoo kind of a figure.

The Jim Dobson nutjob constituency is not unanimously wild about Huck but they are almost unanimously repelled by McCain.

This could get good in a hurry.

[Hippo_Tron]

36. I think a lot of the fundies will vote, but not in the numbers that they voted for Bush in 2004...

And that is key. McCain will get the fundy vote but he simply can't count on the turnout that they had in 2004 and remember that's supposedly what put Bush over the top in the crucial states. Also remember that you can't ban gay marriage twice and even if you could Democrats now control a lot of the state governments that the GOP did in 2004 and can prevent some of those referendums from getting on the ballots.

But even more so than the fundies I'm looking forward to McCain trying to appease the flat earth people and the build a fence people.

[saltpoint]

37. Yes -- it will be fun to watch McCain tap-dance his way around the

immigration issue.

Maybe he'll be crazy enough to opt for the McCain/Tancredo ticket as a path to the Oval Office!

Good point also on the ballot wedge issues. We're almost past time for too many more far-right kook wedge issues to make their way onto state-wide ballots for November.

Which is good for our side. Not so good for McCain.

[OmahaBlueDog]

22. If Huck pulls the upset tomorrow...

they are going to have discussions in Republicland that make our little Hillary v. Barack chats look polite and civilized.

[saltpoint]

26. OmahaBlueDog, that is a great line. "...discussions in Republicland..."

I love it.

And also, I think you're right. The knives are going to come out in the back alley and the stray cats are going to dive for cover.

[mmonk]

30. Don't know.

In NC, McCain is strong. I tend to think he will be there as well.

[nam78_two]

31. I have been wishing for so long that Suckabee would be the Repug nominee

I hope he beats McCain in VA tommorrow, but I doubt that will help him any, at this point.
I know it seems impossible now, but it makes me sad. He would have been a wonderful R nominee-we could have gone to town on that nut :-/. Not that McCain isn't nuts, but Schmuckabee would have been easier to nail.

[saltpoint]

34. It's true -- we would have had Huckabee out in the middle of the

parking lot as a huge target, and if we could have just put the full aim on his campaign then, it would drag the fundie nutbag demographic down with him.

That would have been an excellent opportunity.