Florida Primary - Predictapalooza [Update: McCain Wins]

The final game of the primary pre-season wraps up tonight at 8:00 pm.  Though it's technically an exhibition match on the Democrat side, that hasn't stopped Hillary Clinton from violating her pledge not to campaign in Florida, proving that her word truly is her bond, unless she benefits personally from breaking it.

For what it's worth, Clinton appears poised to win by double-digits tonight and will presumably make great hay of it (despite the zero delegates it will win her) in order to salve the burns of the Camelot endorsements and her outsized defeat in South Carolina.

Let's call that one 55-33 in Hillary's favor, with Edwards barely breaking into double digits. [Update: Actual results - 50-33.  Not a terrible guess.]

On the Republican side, Romney and McCain are about as tied as tied can be, with McCain enjoying a tiny advantage in the polling average.  That said, a number of intangibles give Romney fans reason to be optimistic.  To date, he's been fairly successful when carpet-bombing a state with saturation ad buys (which he's been doing in Florida).  And the momentum observed in broader polling trends seems to favor Mitt, which could give him an edge over the most current surveys, which are a day or two old.  The absentee and early vote phenomenon in Florida (typically judged to boost Rudy relative to his poll numbers) may also favor Romney vis a vis McCain, as McCain's moderate voting bloc likely overlaps with Rudy's more than Mitt's does.  Finally, there's a significant property tax amendment on Florida's primary ballot, which may drive turnout among fiscal conservatives, who can be expected to more supportive of Romney over McCain than the state's GOP primary voters on the whole.

Then again, one intangible that may work against Romney is the possibility that misinformed poll workers are inviting independents to vote in the GOP primary, in violation of state law and likely to the benefit of McMaverick.

With that in mind, let's put some random numbers on the board:

Romney: 34 [31]
McCain: 32 [36]
Giuliani: 20 [15]
Huckabee: 11 [14]

Once the results are in (hopefully by 9ish), I'll update the scoreboard, which I boldly predict will look very different by the end of the evening. [Low hanging fruit successfully picked.]

Update: Brit Hume reports that the early exit polling is showing a "very tight" race.  Whaddaya know.

Bill Kristol makes the point that the absentee and early votes may be reported by the counties in the first batch of returns, which would likely overstate Romney's vote share early in the night, relative to McCain's.

Update: The first returns show McCain over Romney 32-26.  Interestingly, Fox just announced results of a phone survey that suggested Rudy supporters were breaking for Romney 2:1 over McCain as their second choice (the opposite of what I speculated above), so the early return bias may actually favor McCain, assuming they're loaded up with early and absentee votes.

Who knows.  Less than 1% reporting so far -- whoop, new update... Still less than 1% reporting, but McCain now leads Romney by just 1 point, 29-28.  Meanwhile, Clinton leads Obama almost 58-21.

CNN's election center is once again a good source for real-time results.

Allah points to some exit polling at The Campaign Spot, which bodes a little ominously for Mitt, giving McCain a 1.7 point edge (and they claim to include early and absentee votes, which seems peculiar if it's an exit poll).

Update: Fox News calls it for Hillary with 19% reporting and Clinton leading Obama 48-29.

Now that the panhandle polling places have closed, Fox is discussing its exit polls, which they say favor Romney over McCain 35-31.

Bizarrely, troublingly, the exit poll shows McCain beating Romney among "economy voters" 38-34.

Update: With 29% reporting, McCain leads 34-33.

CNN's exit polling details suggest McCain won a plurality in slightly more demographic categories than Romney.  Overall, the poll gives McCain a 2.6 point edge (33.7-31.1).

Update: With a showing somewhere around 15% tonight, Rudy Giuliani plans to give a speech at 9:00.  Mark Halperin at Time Magazine expects Giuliani to drop out and endorse McCain before tomorrow's debate.

And with 54% reporting, the AP and Fox News call it for McCain, who now leads Romney 35-31 and a margin of 53,000 votes.

Intangibles, schmintangibles.

Assuming Florida's full delegate slate is not reinstated by the RNC, McCain will pocket all 57 delegates, bringing his total to 97, with Romney in second with 74 delegates.

McCain's average finish improves to 2.3nd, but still lags Romney's pack-leading average of 1.9th.  Romney also maintains the higher average vote share (37% compared with 23% for McCain) over the 7 contests to date, but McCain's weighted average share (i.e. his total votes received to date) has now crept above Romney's.

Both candidates have a total of 3 wins.  To put it in the Romney vernacular, Mitt has 3 golds and 3 silvers, while McCain has 3 golds, 1 silver, and 1 bronze.