The results of Super Tuesday!

John McCain won the big states, New York and California, as well as 7 other states giving him a total win of 511 delegates. His performance positions him as the front-runner but certainly has not ended the race. There were mixed feelings at the McCain camp after the victory. While he told the crowd “Tonight, I think we must get used to the idea, that we are the Republican Party front-runner”, he was also cautious, speaking in terms of a “long way ahead”. Mr McCain has good reason to be cautious, he is still treated with suspicion by Republican conservatives who believe him to be soft on the Democrats and somewhat of a maverick. Super Tuesday has shown us that Republican conservatives are still not willing to embrace McCain, preferring Romney and Huckabee.

Mitt Romney certainly had a bad night on Tuesday. He is significantly behind John McCain in terms of delegates. He won 7 states but only accrued 176 delegates as a result. The McCain campaign team has certainly tried to portray Romney as out of the race, by releasing a memo penned by McCain strategist Charlie Black. “With Mike Huckabee still a factor in this race, particularly in the South, and many contests moving forward proportional, the math is nearly impossible for Mitt Romney to win the nomination,” he wrote.

Mike Huckabee is a thorn in the side for the Romney campaign. By directly competing with Romney for conservative support, Huckabee has split the Republican conservative vote and given McCain an opportunity to extend his lead. it is becoming very likely that Huckabee is staying in the race, precisely to prevent Romney from winning the race. While Huckabee and McCain do not agree on all of their policy, they do share a dislike of Mitt Romney.

 The Democratic Race

The race to secure the democratic nomination remains neck and neck after a largely inconclusive Super Tuesday for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Their wins are largely balanced and it doesn’t seem too unbelievable to suggest that the nomination might still be contested at the Democratic National Convention.

Hillary Clinton won 8 states, 5 less than Barack Obama. However included in these states were the big prizes such as California and New York. Therefore the number of delegates that she won was 582, 20 more than Obama. The Clinton Camp was extremely optimistic after Tuesday’s result. Clinton campaign spokesman Doug Hattaway had this to say, “The voters defied the pundits’ expectations again, we’re excited about beating the perceived momentum that Obama had,” With Clinton still garnering support from female voters she certainly has cause for celebration. The night did throw up some cause for concern, the Clinton camp was focused on winning the big states, ignoring the many smaller states that went to Obama. In addition, Obama did welll even in the states he lost, and in the democratic system where every vote counts this could prove to be important as the campaign continues.

The Obama campaign had a mixed night. While there is certainly no grounds to suggest that he isn’t a serious contender, there is the feeling that Obama’s supporters were hoping for a knockout blow that would push them firmly into the lead. Instead the ‘campaign for change’ has really bought more time in a race that seems to favour Hillary the longer it goes on. There is some concern that despite the momentum Senator Obama had built up in the previous week, he was unable to turn it into a decisive victory. However this is unlikely to dampen optimism amongst Obama’s campaigners and with reports that he raised more than $1m a day in one recent month Barack Obama is definitely still in the race, and there is no indication that a clear winner is going to appear any time soon.