I'M WITH

ROSS DOUTHAT.  This is a two man race -- Romney vs. McCain.  Mike Huckabee can hardly get a vote outside of the "evangelical" population, and his real role now is wingman for John McCain. Giuliani, on the other hand, is crashing around the country.  Hunter is out, Fred will be out.  Paul is a non-factor.  Enough summary, here are some details other pundits have missed:

• John McCain lost to Huckabee among GOP voters in South Carolina.  McCain has yet to carry the Republican vote in any state.  Think about that for a minute.
  
• John McCain continues to do extremely well with those having a negative feeling about the Bush Presidency -- without the huge margin McCain got from these voters he would have been a loser in South Carolina
• Half of all South Carolina GOP voters believe that illegal aliens should be deported and they should not be given amnesty -- 25% of those folks voted for John McCain, who ran as the anti-illegal immigrant candidate in South Carolina.
• McCain again swept the geezer vote in South Carolina -- if the vote were up to those under 60 John McCain would have lost.
  
• John McCain is despised in much in his home region -- the West -- where he's been utterly crushed twice by Mitt Romney.
• Mormons were one-quarter of the vote in Nevada -- and 95% of them voted for Romney.  I'm thinking that's better than John Kennedy did with Catholics in 1960.
  
• Eight percent of Nevada GOP caucusers were Hispanic -- Romney defeated McCain almost 2-1 among these voters.
• Mitt Romney has a real Mormon problem.  The only part of the country he is taking by big margins are historically tolerant Western states where most folks have neighbors who are Mormon.  In large numbers "evangelical" Christians are voting on religious grounds. They explicitly tell pollsters that the religion of a candidate matters to them, and they are voting for Huckabee, McCain, Thompson -- just about anybody but Mitt Romney.  Romney gets half of the votes from the "born again" as he gets from voters of other religious identification -- a pattern you see with no other candidate.
• Huckabee continues in his failure to pull much of a vote outside of the "evangelical" population.  In South Carolina Huckabee was tied for 3rd place behind even Mitt Romney among voters who were not self-identified as "born again".
  

Nevada exit poll results are here.  South Carolina exit polls are here.

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