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McCain’s Michigan Letdown

by Patrick Ruffini :: January 15th, 2008 11:57 pm

Mitt gets his win, Hugh gets his night, and we begin to see what mainline conservative opposition to McCain can look like in later primaries.

In two states in a row, John McCain underperformed 2000 — when he was eventually drubbed by 20 points nationally. Mitt Romney may have run as the “Governor of Michigan” but McCain was dubbed the “Governor of New Hampshire.” Romney won his state by 9, McCain won his by 5. Also, in both New Hampshire and Michigan, McCain has not closed well. He finished no better than the final polls in New Hampshire, and lost by 9 in Michigan when the final RCP average showed 2.7.

Also, as in New Hampshire, McCain did not attain blowout margins among independents and Democrats and their share of the vote plummeted. McCain is no longer the insurgent, but the putative frontrunner and mischief makers from the other side have little incentive to cross over to support him. This cushion that kept him alive in 2000 is no longer there for him in 2008. Though there are some indications he’s making up for it in Republican support, that trend was more apparent in New Hampshire than Michigan.

Did Romney family nostalgia play a role? Not among those voters old enough to remember George Romney. McCain won voters over 65 by 39-38%.

Other highlights of Romney’s impressive, broad-based win:

Romney won conservatives 41-23%, with 20% for Huckabee.
Romney won Republicans 41-27%.
Romney won Evangelicals 34-29% for Huckabee. McCain took just 23%.
Romney won with those satisfied with President Bush 45-24%. Yes, Republicans are split 50-50 on this, but it’s easier to message around support for the party’s leader rather than opposition to him. McCain always has to tread gingerly on this to avoid angering what institutional support he has.
Romney’s margins were strongest in the Detroit suburbs, with 46% of the vote in Oakland & Macomb Counties.

And once again, McCain shows us exactly what the Republican coalition does not look like, and why it may be difficult to harmonize McCain’s base with what he needs to do to win:

McCain won Democrats 41-33%.
McCain won pro-choice voters 39-35%.
He won among those who never attend church by 11 points — 39-28.
The “architect of the surge” won with Iraq war disapprovers 36-29.

It’s unclear what this means at the end of the day, and if McCain’s national (and South Carolina) momentum now dissipates. There was a great deal of hoopla over Michigan in 2000, with a great deal of talk then about Mac being Back after a bruising South Carolina defeat a few nights before. But it wasn’t to be. South Carolina was what mattered.

Since the media has mythologized South Carolina so, will we back to square one if McCain prevails against an opposition that increasingly looks like the Clampitts? Any two of Huckabee, Romney, and Thompson could easily gang up on McCain to take him out, but they are divided almost evenly, it’s unclear who has real momentum, and Romney had abandoned the state (to get the Michigan win). Will tonight give him enough traction to be the chief conservative rival? Even if it could, I’m not sure Romney wants a direct confrontation with McCain in SC. He has not won on Southern accented ground before, and has done no better than hold his own among Evangelicals, though we did see McCain run well behind with them tonight, so maybe that’s grounds for reconsidering.

If not Romney, who? Huckabee? That’s not ideal for Romney, because it locks a lot of conservative votes into an appealing anti-Romney candidate with vote getting potential. In an ideal world (for Romney), a bunch of support coalesces around FDT, as he seems to be the most harmless going down the stretch (and he ends this Huckabee nonsense), but he’d have to jump through the most hoops in the next few days.

So, I’m not willing to proclaim the end of McCain just yet. However, home state ties notwithstanding, Romney has got to be liking what these exit poll internals are showing as we move from retail to wholesale states. In Michigan, Romney’s vote pattern closely matched that of President Bush throughout the 2000 primary season. If he can get enough of a bounce to get voters elsewhere to notice, he might still have a shot.

Tagged: john mccain mitt romney

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