Intransigent Huck Voters
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 2nd, 2008 1:10 amThe Romney campaign’s February 5th math is simple: move all the voters from the Huckabee pile onto theirs and claim a majority of conservatives. Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple.
In the South — still more delegate-rich per capita than NY, CA, NJ, IL, etc. — the “conservative” vote, defined as Romney + Huckabee, is splitting down the middle. Most polls down South look like McCain 30, Huckabee 25, Romney 25. We’ve seen how this played out in South Carolina, except there it was establishment conservatives refusing to take the advice that they play ball with Huckabee to strengthen their hand in Florida. We also saw it in rural northern Florida, where in many cases it was a three man race (and often a two man race between McCain and Huck).
The problem with this analysis is that I’ve seen no evidence that Huckabee voters would go to Romney. On a county level, the Romney and Huckabee votes are negatively correlated, with Romney representing the conservative side of the Chamber of Commerce/Rotary Club vote and not really showing outsized strength with Evangelicals.
Moreover, the Florida exit poll asked about second choices. Though the poll as reported doesn’t specifically break down the result by first choice vote, I’ve thrown the question into Excel to get some estimates (see it here). The poll outright defied the conventional wisdom of Giuliani voters breaking cleanly for McCain or Huckabee voters for Romney.
Giuliani voters actually split their second choice between McCain and Romney about 40-40. But Huckabee voters went for McCain as their second choice about 44 to 33%. That’s not surprising if you look at the returns. McCain won most pro-Huckabee counties, but not because Huckabee split the vote, but because McCain held his own (usually with between 30-40% of the vote) and Romney did poorly in these areas.
If you look at county returns, you’ll see that McCain is the Coca-Cola of GOP candidates, always performing at a consistent 30-40%, except in Miami-Dade (where he was higher thanks to Cubans) and any county that is both suburban and very conservative (which Romney’s cornered the market on — a good omen for Orange County). McCain does well in swing counties and liberal-leaning metro areas, but surprisingly, he doesn’t tank in rural, Evangelical areas. But Romney does. McCain seems to have a slightly greater affinity with Huckabee’s base than Romney does.
There is a message in these returns to conservatives busy soldering together the coalition below decks: do not assume that just because they’re all pro-life, that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham speak for the social conservatives Romney needs next Tuesday. They don’t. Being pro-life and pro-marriage is not enough. To understand what Huckabee voters want, you need to actually appreciate what Mike Huckabee brings to the table, which is an emphasis on faith, undiluted. Many conservatives, particularly those around here, do not. While many of us agree on the social issues, the conservative establishment resented how he injected his religion into the campaign. Never have I seen conservatives so readily repeat the Barry Lynn/ACLU line on the “wall” between church and state.
It’s instructive to study how George W. Bush united the conservative coalition eight years ago. He did so not as a Mitt Romney Republican but as a Mike Huckabee Republican. The only thing Bush offered fiscal conservatives was tax cuts. The rest was Catholic social thought. Say what you will about him, but Bush has never gone squishy on a single social issue in eight years. But has gone wobbly on fiscal issues, leading to a revolt in the conservative establishment. As Bush knew, and as we are re-learning with the rise of John McCain and the intransigence of Mike Huckabee’s base, fiscal conservatism is where the opinion leaders are, and social conservatism is where the votes are.
Mitt Romney is trying to unify the party as a business guy from Belmont who is culturally as far removed from Suwannee County, Florida as you can get. He’s going about it very clinically: vote for me because I’m not McCain. But I’m not sure that message holds much sway with an audience that takes its cues from Christian radio not News/Talk and certainly not National Review. And notice his message: it’s all about the economy, and nothing about Life and only a little bit about marriage. Christian voters have noticed.
Romney is pinning his hopes on brining in the social “leg of the stool.” But though they’re not wild about McCain, I’d venture that a plurality of these voters would rank Romney third.
Don’t mistake this post as siding with the Huckabee/SoCon analysis of the party. I’m simply analyzing it from a 30,000 foot perspective. And as one of those FiscalCons who’s now with Romney, what I’m seeing here is not effective coalition politics.
Specifically, it seems to me that the conservative establishment’s decision to go nuclear first on Huckabee (who never had a shot but speaks for voters we need in November) before McCain (who always had a shot but speaks mostly for himself) will rank as a pretty serious strategic blunder.
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Tagged: conservatism 
mike huckabee mitt romney
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