NV, SC recap

Two out of three.  One of these days I'm gonna hit it spot on.  I called Nevada pretty much right on.  I overestimated Edwards' percentage, partly because I neglected to take into account Nevada caucus rules governing viability (similar to Iowa's).  But Clinton did win a relatively narrow victory, which she is painting as a big victory.  Romney won huge, as expected.

South Carolina is a different story.  I got the percentages almost exactly right, but flipped the top the two (obviously a big miss).  Here's the rundown:

McCain   +4%

Huckabee   -3%

Thompson  spot on

Romney +1%

Paul   spot on

Giuliani -1%

So I inverted the top two, but otherwise called it right.  

Now I want to respond to a comment from last post.  Yes, But wrote...

"But how do you explain McCain doing so well in S. Carolina?  Huckabee is an evangelical, from a souther state...but McCain did so much better here than in 2000 despite the same dirty tricks tried vs. him as before."

Interesting to note that actually, McCain did worse in South Carolina this year than he did in 2000.  Here are the 2000 results:

Bush - 305,000 votes, 53.4%

McCain - 240,000 votes, 41.9%

Yesterday, McCain won 140,000 votes and 33% of the vote.  Of course, McCain was facing three viable candidates (Huckabee, Romney, Thompson) instead of one, but I think it is difficult to say that he did better here than in 2000.  He got 100,000 fewer votes this time around.

McCain won yesterday because Fred Thompson siphoned off some of the hard Conservative vote from Huckabee.  Among the 34% of voters who said they were "Very Conservative," 22% voted for Thompson (his largest bloc).  This group was the only group Huckabee won, but he didn't win it by enough to overcome McCain's lead among the more moderate voters.  Without Thompson, Huckabee wins South Carolina.