As the votes for an unprecedented Super Tuesday are now being counted, there seem to be two realities, according to CNN’s
Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider: Republican conservatives are disunited and the Democrats are in for a long, long night (as are bloggers):
The first round of exit polls from Republican and Democratic primaries across the country are providing some early signs on what trends are at play, and how the night may go.
On the Republican side, the conservative vote appears to be deeply split: 80 percent of Mitt Romney voters identify themselves as conservative, and roughly the same percentage of Mike Huckabee voters say the same. But only 49 percent of McCain voters said they were conservative – one sign the Arizona senator’s efforts over the last week to placate conservative voters has not yet paid off.
It’ll be hard for McCain’s efforts to pay off.
As I noted in a post earlier today, I listened to at least five conservative talk radio shows yesterday during a 430 mile drive and each show was a a virtual non-stop radio commercial former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (who, only months before, had been characterized by many of these hosts as a flip-flopper who in the past was “a liberal.” And the hosts –and most of their listeners — truly seemed to dislike McCain personally (although they insisted there were only policy differences). Schneider continues:
On the Democratic side, early indications suggest it could be a long night. Primary outcomes often turn on those people who made their decisions within the last three days before the vote. According to the exit polls, Obama and Clinton are essentially splitting those voters, with 47 percent going for Obama and 46 percent for Clinton.
There’s no doubt Democrats are torn between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the early exit polls show they are not bitterly divided: 72 percent of Democrats said they would be satisfied if Clinton won the party’s nomination, while 71 percent say the same about Obama.
That’s another reason why, more than ever, Hillary Clinton needs to keep her husband under wraps or duct-taped. Let the Democratic contest play out as a spirited, vigorous political contest and may the best man or woman win and can the innuendo tactics that seem more like the work of THIS GUY than a former American president…or even a typical political spouse.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.