I will be spending most of Saturday driving all over Utah. I'm wishing I either had satellite radio or that Utah had a better news radio station so I could listen to politics and the polls all day tomorrow. KSL is a great station sometimes, but they air too many sports shows and games live, thereby impeding my political newstalk time!
Also, you may infer from my schedule tomorrow (buy groceries, go apartment hunting, go to Park City for Sundance movies) that I'm not feeling wretched right now. That doesn't mean that all the fun I am DETERMINED to go enjoy tomorrow won't kill me. Let's hear it for Lortab!
And without further ado, here are my predictions for the upcoming caucuses-
Nevada GOP- I'm going with Romney winning over McCain by at least 10%. And Giuliani a close third. Huck will be nowhere in sight. Nevada is winner take all, which would put Romney at 67 delegates.
Dems- I think it will be Clinton by a very large margin, possibly as much as 30%. Edwards will concede and drop out Saturday night.
South Carolina- ooh so tricky right now! I'm very unsure of my predictions, but I'll share them anyway. I'm going with Huckabee at 30% and McCain around 27%. Romney will only get around 10-11%, but that is to be expected I think. I expect Thompson and Giuliani will get less than 10% each. And I hope and pray Ron Paul bows out. But I do expect to hear him go independent on Sunday morning on a talk show. SC divides its delegates, which would give Huck about 8, putting him around 40, McCain around 6-7 giving him about 20, and Romney only 2-3, but he'll have 67 including Nevada, and he'll be the front runner with about 70.
The Democrats won't be in SC for another week, so I don't have to make predictions there. And I haven't followed their delegate count close enough to tally things now.
All in all, and against all of the odds, I think Romney will be the clear front runner for at least a week. But then we hit Florida, which is winner take all, and ahs 57. And right now Romney and Giuiliani are neck and neck there. Will NV be enough to push Romney up and over the edge to win FL? I have no idea. But this sure is a fun and exciting race!
I don't think Paul will bail out for an independent bid this early. I think whether he even does the independent bid will in part depend on who gets the nomination from each party- so we've still got a little bit of time before it all shakes out.
ReplyDeleteI think Nevada will be closer for the democrats, and I doubt Edwards will bail yet. If it becomes clear that Hillary has got the nomination I think he will- but if there is any chance Obama can keep up while Edwards is still in it I think he'll stay just on the chance that there will be a brokered convention and he can play a bigger part.