Outside the Beltway

Florida Primary Predictions

James Joyner · Tuesday, January 29, 2008 · 5 comments

Yes, it’s that time again: trying to make predictions in a political season that’s largely defying predictability. Polls are open today in Florida, the last primary state before next week’s Super Tuesday extravaganza, and it’s an important contest, at least on the GOP side.

As for the Democrats, it’ll be a complete shock if Hillary Clinton doesn’t win the meaningless beauty contest. She’s ahead by an average of 19 percent in recent polls and by no less than 13 in any of them.

My guess on the final numbers:

Clinton 51
Obama 35
Edwards 14

No delegates are at stake, at least theoretically, and the media attention will be mostly on the Republican side unless a monumental upset occurs. Still, Clinton will be able to claim victory and gain a tiny bit of momentum heading into next week’s 22-state megaprimary.

The Republican contest is a coin toss between the national frontrunners, Mitt Romney and John McCain.

The most recent polls give McCain a slight advantage and the trend lines seem to be moving his way. Those results, though, are well within the margin of sampling error making the race too close to call.

The other wrinkle a key to remember here is that absentee voting has been going on for weeks, so recent events are not going to have the same impact that they might in a caucus or polling place-only contest. While Rudy Giuliani’s numbers have plummeted since New Hampshire, as many as a million people had already mailed in their ballots by then.

McCain got the 11th hour endorsements of Florida governor Charlie Crist and Senator Mel Martinez, which should help a bit, and rumors that Giuliani is calling it quits may help McCain a bit. One wonders, too, whether Huckabee fans will decide not to “waste their vote” on a guy the polls show has no chance at winning this winner-take-all primary. If so, most will likely decide that the war hero is preferable to the flip-flopping Mormon.

The fact that Romney has outspent McCain 10-to-1 in television advertising and isn’t leading makes me think his support is a bit soft, too.

With very little confidence, then, I predict the following finish:

McCain 35%
Romney 32%
Giuliani 17%
Huckabee 11%
Paul 5%

Actual results may vary, of course. The polls have been uncannily accurate throughout this season with the notable exception that they have occasionally vastly under-counted the winner’s support.

The winner here will get a large boost going into Super Tuesday, since both McCain and Romney are vying to establish themselves as the clear favorite. If it goes anything like this, though, both Giuliani and Huckabee are toast.

Ron Paul, of course, will be sitting exactly where he intended all along, poised to win the whole thing once the field clears. (Well, not really.)

UPDATE: Scott Elliot sees both races tighter than my predictions, albeit with the same outcomes. He’s also rounded up other blogger predictions.

Feel free to add your predictions in the comments below. The closest for each contest will get a mention in tomorrow’s postmortem.

Update (Alex Knapp): Because James asked, and because I love making completely false predictions, here are my scores below. Frankly, I think that the sheer amount of early voting is really going to skew the results:

Democrats
Clinton 48
Obama 32
Edwards 20

This, by the way, is a Clinton victory that should be spun by the media as completely meaningless, due to early voting, the lack of campaigning by Obama and Edwards, and the actual “under-the radar” campaigning by Clinton. It will, however, be spun as a “change in momentum” for the campaigns heading into Super Tuesday.

Republicans

McCain 30
Romney 25
Giuliani 25
Huckabee 12
Paul 5
Thompson 3

(I’m assuming that the early voting returns will include some Thompson ballots, and will also produce a surprisingly strong showing for Giuliani.)

Update (Chris Lawrence): Here are some completely off-the-cuff predictions:

Democrats
Clinton 50
Obama 38
Edwards 10
Kucinich 2

Republicans
McCain 29
Romney 29
Giuliani 18
Huckabee 15
Paul 6
Thompson 2

Florida Recount II, here we come!

Update (Dave Schuler): Goodbye Rudy Tuesday

My guess is that in today’s Florida primary, at least partly because of the number of older voters, the regular party candidates win on both sides of the aisle. That means that Romney will narrowly beat McCain leaving Rudy Giuliani a distant third on the Republican side (Ron Paul should poll has customary 6%). Giuliani well may withdraw after such a finish although it hardly seems worth it with Super Tuesday mere days away.

On the Democratic side it means that Clinton will beat Obama narrowly with Edwards a distant third.

Update (Steven Taylor): I predict McCain wins by 2 points and that Giuliani eeks out a third place finish based on early voting. Meanwhile, Hillary wins 50% of the vote and cashes in on 0 delegates.