McCain gets 19 delegates and Huckabee gets 5, no one else gets any. Clearly loaded in favor of whoever wins. South Carolina will have 47 delegates at the Republican convention. Nope, I don't know who gets the other 23 delegates.
The Washington Post discusses how McCain was able to defuse the attacks by conservative Republicans who don't want him as the Republican nominee. Both Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay (among others) have been literally foaming at the mouth over the threat that McCain represents to the Republican Party, and the Republican voters in South Carolina rejected their fulminations. A number of conservative Republicans had blocked his run for the 2000 Republican nomination in the South Carolina Primary, but couldn't do it this time.
MSNBC offered these results for the Republican South Carolina primary:
| Candidate | Votes | % votes | Delegates |
| John McCain | 143,224 | 33% | 19 |
| Mike Huckabee | 128,908 | 30% | 5 |
| Fred Thompson | 67,897 | 16% | 0 |
| Mitt Romney | 64,970 | 15% | 0 |
| Ron Paul | 15,773 | 4% | 0 |
| Rudy Giuliani | 9,112 | 2% | 0 |
| Duncan Hunter | 1,035 | 0% | 0 |
Here are the MSNBC South Carolina exit polls.
One thing about the presentation is confusing. Within each category they list the percentage of the different answers in that category. The first column in each category totals to 100% of all those answers. So given 51% male voters and 49% female voters, between them they are 100% of all the voters in that category. But the rows are different. The numbers in each row to the right of the first column are percentages of the first number in the row.
Let me say that again. All the numbers to the right of the first number in the row total 100% of that first number and only of that first number. This is the confusing part. The first number in each row is a percentage of all the first numbers in each category in the first column total 100%, but the numbers in each row to the right of that first number are given as a percent of the first number in the row.
So 2% of all the male voters voted for Giuliani, 28% of the males voted for Huckabee, 32% of the males voted for McCain, and so on. All the numbers after the first number in the row for male voters total to 100% of that first number in the row for male voters. There is nothing in the display to show that the percentages to the right of the first column are not the same kind of number as the first number in the row.
Nothing in the presentation indicates that all the percentages to the right of the first number of each row are weighted by the percentage of males or females who voted. So why does that matter? In the "age" category for example, Huckabee bested McCain in the "age 18 to 24" groups by 34% to 26%. That appears important, but since only 5% of the total voters were age 18 to 24, that's a lot less important than the fact that of the 24% of the total voters who were over age 65 McCain won 40% to Huckabee's 26%.
When you see a presentation of a percentage, it is always extremely important to know what total it is a percentage of. In this case, the percentages in the first column are percentages of the total votes in that question, but every number to the right of the first number is a percentage of only the number in the first column. The two percentage numbers cannot be compared to each other.
With that minor piece of confusion in mind, let's look as some of the questions.
McCain and Huckabee were roughly equal with those who considered themselves Republicans, but McCain's big edge was with independents. That suggests that McCain probably will be weaker in the many states with closed primaries where independents can't help him.
McCain got significantly more self-identified moderates than Huckabee did, while Huckabee got more self-identified Conservatives. Without Thompson in the race, that probably would have been an even greater advantage for Huckabee.
It looks like Huckabee got the younger Republicans and McCain got the fogies, while income except at the extremes was pretty much the same for each.
Huckabee did get more of those with incomes under $30,000 a year while McCain really got the ones with income over $200,000 per year.
There are a number of questions on religion. The most significant such questions appeared to be "How much does it matter to you that a candidate shares your religious beliefs?" (Huckabee had a big advantage in "A great deal / Somewhat" while McCain had an even stronger advantage in the much smaller group that stated "Not much / Not at all".) While "White Born-again or Evangelical Christians" strongly preferred Huckabee to McCain. The religious issue appears to be a big advantage to Huckabee in the South, and probably a disadvantage everywhere else in the U.S. That's probably a large part of Giuliani's calculation for not contesting the South Carolina primary.
Education was not a big differentiator, except that McCain did get more of those with postgraduate degrees.
Those who think that abortion should be illegal went strongly for Huckabee.
Huckabee won strongly with those who said that he shared their values, while McCain got almost all those who said one of the candidates has the experience needed.
Overall I'd say that McCain "won" South Carolina because Thompson took just enough votes from Huckabee to keep him from winning, while there were enough independents to put McCain over the top. With Thompson out, McCain won't be especially competitive as the top vote getter in the Republican Southern state primaries. That will be even more true in closed primaries.
Tom DeLay represents those Republicans who detest McCain but like Huckabee. Limbaugh hates them both. Will he go for Romney or Giuliani? The money Republicans will go for Romney or McCain, but be effective only outside of the Southern states where evangelical religion won't matter so much. Since McCain remains weak with Republican voters, the close primaries will probably do him in and throw it over to Romney.
Giuliani is going to be a wild card, assuming that he still has any cards left to play. We'll know after Florida on Tuesday Jan 29th if Rudy is still in the game. If he can still do anything at all outside of the big city states of New York and New Jersey I'll be surprised. But I've been surprised a lot this year already.
I don't see anyone in the Republican party (yet) who can pull the Reagan Republican coalition back together, though.
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