John McCain speaking in Miami after his victory. With him from left are Senator Mel Martinez and Gov. Charlie Crist and Cindy McCain. More Photos >
Sen. John McCain with his wife, Cindy, and daughter Meghan in Miami after his victory. More Photos >
Multimedia
Related
Transcript: John McCain’s Florida Primary Speech (January 29, 2008)
Transcript: Mitt Romney’s Florida Primary Speech (January 29, 2008)
Transcript: Mike Huckabee’s Florida Primary Speech (January 29, 2008)
Transcript: Hillary Clinton’s Florida Primary Speech (January 29, 2008)
Video
The Arizona senator, who was outspent by his competitors in the state, drew on the support of moderate and socially liberal voters to beat out Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and his chief rival for the nomination.
Lagging far behind was Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who had virtually staked his campaign on a strong showing in the Florida race. Mr. Giuliani, who spent weeks campaigning across the Florida peninsula, is fighting for third place with former Gov. Mike Huckabee, a potentially fatal performance on a do-or-die night for the former mayor.
Mr. McCain had 36 percent of the vote and Mr. Romney had 32 percent with more than three-quarters of the precincts reporting. Mr. Giuliani had 15 percent of the vote, while Mr. Huckabee had 14 percent.
“Our victory might not have reached landslide proportions but it is sweet nonetheless,” Mr. McCain said to supporters. He described himself as a “Republican conservative,” though Mr. Romney attracted more support from Florida voters who called themselves as “very” conservative.
Mr. Giuliani, speaking to supporters in Orlando, Fla., broadcast a large smile even as his candidacy appeared to be coming to a close. “You don’t always win,” he said. “You can always try to do it right.”
He referred to his campaign several times in the past tense. “I’m proud that we chose to stay positive and to run a campaign of ideas in an era of personal attacks, negative ad and cynical spin,” he said. “We ran a campaign that was uplifting.”
In the Democratic race, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won with a strong showing over her chief rival, Senator Barack Obama, though the winner of that contest will receive no delegates to the national convention because of a scheduling dispute with the national party. None of the Democratic candidates campaigned in the state and the race was generally considered moot.
In an energetic victory speech, Mrs. Clinton appealed to Florida voters who may have felt disenfranchised by the cloud cast over their primary. “I promise you I will do everything I can to make sure not only are Florida’s Democratic delegates seated, but that Florida is in the winning column for the Democrats in 2008,” she told supporters in Davie, Fla., where she flew on Tuesday for an appearance.
But the focus on Tuesday was squarely on the Republican race, which offers 57 delegates to its winner. Mr. McCain now jumps to a large lead over Mr. Romney in the delegate count.
The Arizona senator received much of his support in Florida from moderates and socially liberal Republican voters, according to exit polls. More conservative and more affluent voters turned to Mr. Romney.
White evangelical Christians boosted Mr. Huckabee’s campaign in South Carolina, but in Florida, the group divided its support between Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Romney, with each candidate receiving about a third of its votes.
Early exit polls showed a heavy turnout of voters who expressed concern about the state of the nation’s economy.
Almost half of the Republican voters polled said they considered the economy the most important issue at stake in the election, and almost two-thirds described the nation’s financial state in negative terms.
In the Republican race, more than 60 percent of voters were over 50 years old, and nearly half make $75,000 a year or more.
State election officials said voting has been steady throughout Tuesday.
State election officials in Florida said voting has been steady throughout the day. “Some of the Panhandle counties and more rural counties have had what appears to be a slower turnout,” said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Florida Department of State. He said some high-population counties, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Pinellas and Hillsborough, “have had a higher turnout.”
Weather in Florida was generally good, and Mr. Ivey said no major problems had been reported at the state’s roughly 6,900 polling places.
Campaign officials had predicted a high turnout for the election both because of the important Republican primary and a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot to overhaul property taxes, which had generated great interest.
____________________________________________________________________________________
UPDATED 1/29/2008 AT 10:00PM, C.S.T.:
Mr. McCain’s narrow victory showed he could win in a state where only Republicans were allowed to vote — not just in states like New Hampshire and South Carolina, where his earlier victories were fueled in part by independent voters. And in Florida, even a slim victory is sweet: the state awards its 57 delegates, the most of any contest yet, on a winner-take-all basis.
With 90 percent of the precincts reporting, Mr. McCain had 36 percent of the vote, Mr. Romney 31 percent, Mr. Giuliani 15 percent and Mike Huckabee 13 percent.
“We have a ways to go, but we’re getting close,” Mr. McCain said to supporters gathered here. He described himself as a “Republican conservative,” though he drew strong support in Florida from moderate and socially liberal voters.
Aides to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. McCain were in talks for Mr. Giuliani to possibly endorse the Arizona senator later this week, those involved with the discussions say.
In a concession speech, Mr. Giuliani sounded very much like a defeated candidate, saying the fight for his ideals would continue despite the election results.
“Elections are about a lot more than candidates,” he said. “Elections are about fighting for a cause larger than ourselves. They are about identifying the great challenges of our times and proposing new solutions.”
Despite Mr. McCain’s victory, he now seems headed into a two-person race with Mr. Romney. The two have shown little affection for each other, and they signaled a willingness in Florida to attack intensely as they struggle to appeal to the conservative and evangelical voters who form the backbone of the Republican Party.
Mr. Romney, in St. Petersburg, sounded like a candidate who intended to battle on. He continued to call for change in Washington, and got in what sounded like another swipe at Mr. McCain when he said America needed a president “who has actually had a job in the real economy.”
As he tries to stop Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney is trying to harness the weakening economy to his advantage by emphasizing his background in business and saying he has the ability to lead the nation back to prosperity. Mr. McCain has built his campaign around national security themes, playing off his military background and support for the war in Iraq.
Mr. Romney has sought to portray Mr. McCain as a Democrat in disguise, pointing to his stances on immigration, climate change and campaign finance regulation, all of which depart from Republican orthodoxy. Mr. McCain’s campaign has sought to label Mr. Romney as unprincipled and willing to adjust his positions on issues like abortion for political gain.
Both of them now face the challenge of rallying the party establishment and grass-roots conservatives behind them — or at least not around the other.
While most of the attention in Florida was on the Republicans, Democratic voters gave Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton a victory in a virtually uncontested race. The Democratic Party had stripped the state of its delegates as a punishment for moving its primary earlier in the year, and the leading candidates refrained from campaigning there.
Mr. McCain, of Arizona, emerges from Florida with an opportunity to get back to where he was at the beginning of this roller-coaster of an election season: the anointed front-runner. Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whose early goals of winning Iowa and New Hampshire were thwarted, wanted to show he could prevail in a competitive election somewhere outside of his native Michigan so he could battle on in the week to come.
And the candidacy of Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was left in doubt by his distant finish here. Mr. Giuliani suffered lopsided losses in all the early voting states this year and had staked his candidacy on a strong showing in Florida, where he campaigned more than anywhere else and outspent his rivals on television advertisements over the last month.
But he did not even have a clear edge among voters who were most concerned about his signature issue, terrorism, and Tuesday night he was locked in a race for third place with Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who barely campaigned in Florida.
Surveys of voters leaving polling places painted a picture of how successful each campaign was.
Nearly half of Republican voters listed the economy as the most important issue in exit polls, while 21 percent said terrorism, 16 percent immigration and 14 percent the war in Iraq.
Mr. McCain did significantly better than Mr. Romney among voters who cited the war or the economy as their top concern, while Mr. Romney did significantly better among voters who were most concerned about immigration.
Four in 10 Republican voters said illegal immigrants working in the United States should be deported, while about 3 in 10 said they should be allowed to stay as temporary workers and the same number said they should be offered a chance to apply for citizenship. Mr. McCain was supported by a plurality of those who favored citizenship, and Mr. Romney by those who favored deportation.
Sen. John McCain with Gov. Charlie Crist in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. More Photos >
Hispanics, who made up more than one-tenth of the Republican voters, said they were more inclined to favor a guest-worker program over deportation. Forty-three percent of them said illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain in the United States as temporary workers, while one-third said they should be offered the opportunity to apply for citizenship. Only one-fifth of Hispanic Republicans said they favored deporting illegal immigrants.
Mr. McCain, who supported the immigration proposal last spring that would have created a guest-worker program and a path toward citizenship for illegal immigrants, won roughly half the Hispanic vote. Mr. Giuliani, who strongly courted Cuban-Americans in the Miami area, won about one-quarter of the Hispanic vote, and Mr. Romney, who took the hardest line on illegal immigration, finished a distant third.
Mr. McCain may have been helped with some Hispanic voters by the endorsement he gained last week from Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida. An even bigger surprise endorsement, by the popular Republican governor, Charlie Crist, also appeared to help him.
More than 4 in 10 voters said Mr. Crist’s endorsement of Mr. McCain was important to them, and just over half of them voted for Mr. McCain.
The exit poll was conducted throughout the state by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool with 1,505 Republican primary voters. To take into account the large number of early and absentee voters in Florida, Edison/Mitofsky conducted a pre-election telephone poll and included those results with the opinions of the voters exiting polls on Tuesday.
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 