How it's going down Super Tuesday

It starts with Nevada. Edwards was polling over 10% but on election day only scored 5%. That's because the media had convinced the public that it was a two man race. The media's doing the same thing to the Republicans: a battle royale between Romney and McCain. This means most projections for Huckabee are probably too high. But it will depend on the moment of the early races and the early news coverage.

Romney and McCain are tied in California, the biggest prize this Tuesday. (Rassmussen) But Romney is splitting the Republican base with Huckabee. Huckabee's last gamble is in the South. Polls close on the East Coast at 5:00 pm Pacific Time; in CA they close at 11pm. Which means by the time most CA voters go out to the polls they'll hear the news that Huckabee's lost everywhere (with the possible exception of Tennessee where he's second to McCain, and Georgia, where he's statistically tied with Romney).

So a rational CA Huckabee fan will see that his boy is out by 5:00pm, see how close the race is between McCain and Romney, and decide to boost the conservative base--just like Democrats dropped Edwards in Nevada. Same-day momentum will carry the day on Super-Tuesday. If Romney doesn't pull it off, it's because he couldn't peel off Huck's supporters (and Huckabee doesn't know when to quit, possibly because he wants to punch Romney's teeth in).