I wanted to look at the exit polls from South Carolina before we move on to Florida. THis will be largely from a Huckabee viewpoint. I am going to do a few non political post next. However I will have a special heartfelt plea that a Catholic woman is making as to Huckabee later on tonight.
Lets look at these numbers from CNN exit poll numbers.
THE CATHOLIC VOTE-
Though not huge it is significant. It is a healthy 13 percent of the Republican South Carolina Primary voters in South Carolina. They are also a a segment of the bloc that is very likely to vote
.A couple of days before the election I looked at the Catholic vote in South Carolina and explained why we(Huckabee) were doing so bad.
I used a FOX poll on this matter that was the latest data that would be taken before the election. I went into it here.
A few things. We had no very chance of getting the Catholic vote on the South Carolina coast in large numbers. First there are three segments of Catholics I think.
(1) Those long time South Carolina Catholics on the Coast that have been there long before the Civil War. They are establishment and like their evangelical brothers and sisters there are voting McCain or Romney in significant numbers . Needless to say we are not going to get Catholics that send their children to the Plantation balls and are blue bloods.
(2)Most of the Catholic vote that McCain got though is related to military issues. South Carolina has a tremendous amount of Catholics that are military or from military families. They are also transplants. We see that in the Fox Dynamic poll where Catholics above all other groups placed the issue of WAR and Security as their main concern. That was a McCain group that no one could challenge. In the end on election night he got 45% of the Catholic vote
(3) The third group are retired transplants from the Northeast. Those are friendly needless to say toward their Yankee brother(Romney) and no doubt liked seeing a northerner doing so well in their new adopted state
However there is a tad of good news for Huckabee.
A few days before Mike Huckabee had a dismal 7 percent of the Catholic Vote according to Fox Polling. . On election night Hucakbee had gone up to 11 percent!!! . Now this is where the Fred Thompson factor comes in and should be pointed out. Fred Thompson was not setting this on fire either.
A few days before Thompson had oly 9 % of the Catholic vote. . He reached 14 percent on election night.
He had the same increase as Huckabee. I suspect, but don't have access to that data, that much of this vote came from the Catholic population up north. Though Huckabee did poll a tad better on the post than I expected and might have picked up a tad there. (Let me note that some people are saying the exit polls showed in the end Huckabee with 14 percent of the Catholic vote and Thompson with 18 percent). I am trying to find where they are getting this information and if I can find it I shall post the link. However we shall stay with these percentages because in the end stat wise there is not difference.
If Thompson has not been in it I expect a good bit of this Catholic would have gone Huckabee. Thompson did so well up in large effect because he was a well known person up there because of the closeness to Tennenesse and that Catholics get more conservative as we get more north.
Thus Huckabee would be getting I suspect 20 percent of the Catholic vote which would have shown a upward trend. That would have a nice comparison to ROMNEY who without a Thompson entry might have had 26 to 29 percent of the Catholic vote(again who are the bluebloods on the Coast and some transplants from up north). Many no doubt from Massachusetts
White Evangelical/Born-Again Vs Everyone Else as a whole
Another area that the Fred Thompson surge hurt us.
You will not be seeing this headline but Thompson and Huckabee shared the same percentage of the non evangelical vote according the CNN exit poll. That is 16%
Romney for some reason is getting a huge pass on this. Romney got only 19 percent!!!! So basically Huckabee, Thompson, and Romney pretty much got the same percentage of Methodist, Presbyterians, Anglicans etc.Yet Huckabee is being shown to be the one having the problem!!!!!
Now lets us not play into our opponents hands. Let us(speaking as a Huckabee supporter) not make this all about religion!!! Let us look at economics. If you look as to income groups Huckabee did a lot better than I expected!!
He won the lowest economic group. Tied McCain in the $30-50,000 group and then was nipping at McCain's feet in every category till we get to the people making above $150,000.
Huckabee shows much more consistent appeal with people in various economic classification than Romney or Thompson. Fred Thompson in the end not only robbed us of winning South Carolina. But his entry also denied us the opportunity to show that we were breaking out of our perceived demographic.
Conclusion-
Huckabee had a chance to show a upward trend in his demographics here. However the attacks from the conservative media and Fred Thompson prevented that to some degree.
We shall examine Florida in a few days when more accurate poll date comes in
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