The race for the Republican nomination for US President will be mainly a showdown between John McCain and Mitt Romney in regards to February 5, Super Tuesday. Currently, John McCain is considered the GOP frontrunner. Mitt Romney is attempting to pull an upset victory by rallying up the conservative base of the Republican Party.
While Huckabee was won first place in the Iowa, his campaign has been dying out. His role has been minimized in the GOP race.
“He won’t have significant impact in most states,” said Eddie Mahe, a longtime strategist with the GOP. Mahe addes: “I think he has a constituency in four or five of the states where that will come into play. There’s a couple more of the southern states where he’ll have some support. I question whether that support is going to go beyond that because he’s not present in the news, in the paid media.”
Though those inside Huckabee’s own campaign remain optimistic in their assessment, they too are not willing to tout their chances beyond the Bible Belt states, which is a region of the South that has a large population consisting of socially conservative Evangelical Christian voters.
That was the same voting bloc that gave Mike Huckabee the GOP victory in Iowa.
“We’re in the race because we’re doing well in the early states, especially across the Bible Belt and we’re in the race because we expect to win,” said Alice Stewart, spokeswoman for Huckabee. Stewart adds: “Everyone’s always said we weren’t going to get through Iowa and we did. The money’s coming in, the momentum’s growing and we expect that to continue on Super Tuesday.”
She said that Huckabee still attracts large crowds at his vents along with e-mails coming from his supporters.
Huckabee’s main problem could be that that one voting bloc may not be a singular voting bloc. According to the exit polls conducted by CBS News, the evangelical voters were tied between Huckabee, Romney, and McCain.
It would look unlikely that Huckabee could be a spoiler on Super Tuesday. The exit poll in Florida revealed that over half of Huckabee voters said that they would support McCain if Huckabee was not on the ballot.
Tony Fabrizio, a GOP pollster said that Huckabee’s presence will hold McCain back if that is the case.
“If Huckabee was out of the race it may only increase McCain’s margin,” Fabrizio explains. He adds: “Whereas if Romney were out of the race, it would leave things where it is.”
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