Webloggin » Update - McCain Declared the Winner in Florida, Left is Upset With Hillary Clinton AGAIN!

Update 9:06 CT, McCain has been projected as the winner with 75% of the vote counted. His campaign is now negotiating with the Giuliani camp for an endorsement. I see many of Giuliani votes going the McCain way and that spells trouble for Romney. He will have an uphill battle thanks to the Florida electorate.

The exit polls are starting to trickle in and it’s clear that McCain won on the shoulders of older voters and issues that are left of center of the Republican Party with the exception of Iraq. 48% of those who believe that abortion should always be legal and 44% of those who thought it should be mostly legal pulled the lever for John McCain.

Those with an overly negative opinion of President Bush also sided with the Senator from Arizona. 44% of the voters polled said they though John McCain was more qualified than Mitt Romney who came in at 26%.

McCain took over half of Florida’s Hispanic vote. I did the math, at 11% of the voting public that amounts to 196,043 voters. That translates to 103,904 votes at the time of this writing. The difference in the McCain vote total and Romney totals is only 89,056. One can only conclude that McCain’s pandering to this crowd paid off and may have in fact made up the difference in Florida. Again, McCain overwhelmingly won the vote of those who favor amnesty. A key factor? You decide.

Update 8:50 ET: It looks like Hillary Clinton is going to be the clear winner for the Democrats. Of course that’s what happens when you are the only person on the ballot that is campaigning in the state. It hasn’t been lost on Democrats that Hillary Clinton is trying to manipulate voters by pretending that she accomplished something in Florida, double crossing other candidates by showing up when they had all agreed to bypass the state that gives no delegates to the Dems. She is even planning a post primary close campaign stop and some sort of faux victory speech from what I hear. That is as close to Clinton politics as anyone can get with the appearance of accomplishing something premised on nothing.

The left is upset:

Hillary Clinton continues to defy the agreements not to campaign in Michigan and Florida after the two states broke party rules by moving up their primaries. Clinton left her name on the Michigan ballot after other candidates including Obama and Richardson had their names removed. She has been claiming a victory despite running unopposed, and has been seeking to have the delegates seated despite. Clinton has repeatedly been making public statements to court the Florida vote and will be appearing at a fund raiser in Florida tonight. Signs promoting Clinton such as the one above are appearing in the state.

It is possible Clinton isn’t breaking the letter of the agreement but she is certainly breaking the spirit of the agreement. Clinton fails to realize that character has become a major issue in this election. Americans are getting tired of political leaders who skirt the rules in such manners.

As with the dishonesty seen in many of her recent statements, this type of action raises the question of how she would behave if elected president. We have experienced a president who also takes liberties with the truth and pushes to increase presidential power at every opportunity. Hillary Clinton might sincerely she is acting to do good, but I fear that she will be unable to resist using, and even expanding upon, the increased powers available to the next president. We need a president who can be trusted to resist these temptations and play entirely within the rules. - Liberal Values

The Daily Kosers are equally as turned off if not more:

forget FL & MI for Dems,,, (7+ / 0-)

Recommended by:
mmacdDE, TLS66, donailin, Spunkmeyer, khereva, Thomas Twinnings, hollywood politcaljunkie

They and She broke the rules everybody agreed to ahead of time.
First of all, it is not a victory if nobody runs against you. This is not Putin’s Russia yet.
It is not a victory if you agree to the rules in writing, everybody else follow them and you do not.
It is not disenfranchisement if there are written rules, you agree to them in writing, and then you unilaterally decide to go against them.
Of course it is cheating, and it is not disenfranchisement. - Daily Kos

It’s nice to see that every move Hillary Clinton makes seems to be the wrong one even though the moves are completely in character. Welcome to reality.

Original Post Below:

The Republicans are a different story. McCain and Romney are running a super close race. No clear winner here.

There are some numbers coming out on the Florida Primary; Fox News has them:

On the Republican side:

McCain has a slight lead over Romney with Giuliani trailing way behind.

On the Democrat side:

Clinton has a substantial lead over Obama and Edwards.

Remember, these are early numbers and can change. It sure seems to be a real nail biter between McCain and Romney.

Additionally, Fox News just reported that Putnam county is reporting mechanical problems on their electronic voting booths. Great, just what we need, another Florida voting issue.