The Florida 2008 Presidential Primary: The Voters Seize
Control of the Candidate Selection Process
The
January 29, 2008 Florida Presidential Primary was not supposed to count for the
Democrats. Having violated national party
rules against holding primaries before February 5th, to give
selected small states around the country a chance to hold their primaries and
caucuses before the big states chimed in, Florida was stripped of its
Democratic delegates and the candidates agreed not to mount campaigns in the
Sunshine State.
This did not stop voters from flocking to the polls to pick
between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama
and John Edwards on the Democratic side, and John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy
Giuliani, Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee on the
Republican side. Some 3,658,802 voted
for president in the Florida primary, which is almost half of the record number
that voted for president in the General election in 2004. 50.3% of the Republicans and 41.9% of the
Democrats cast ballots. As a result,
even though the Florida primary allegedly did not “count” for the Democrats,
John Edwards dropped out of the race after his weak showing.
Here are the results:
|
Hillary Clinton |
863,787 |
23.61% |
|
|
John McCain |
693,508 |
18.95% |
|
|
Mitt Romney |
595,830 |
16.28% |
|
|
Barack Obama |
570,432 |
15.59% |
|
|
Rudy Giuliani |
282,503 |
7.72% |
|
|
Mike Huckabee |
259,598 |
7.10% |
|
|
John Edwards |
249,500 |
6.82% |
|
|
Ron Paul |
62,146 |
1.70% |
|
|
Fred Thompson |
22,389 |
0.61% |
|
|
Joseph Biden Jr. |
15,574 |
0.43% |
|
|
William Richardson III |
14,866 |
0.41% |
|
|
Dennis Kucinich |
9,625 |
0.26% |
|
|
Christopher Dodd |
5,423 |
0.15% |
|
|
Mike Gravel |
5,249 |
0.14% |
|
|
Alan Keyes |
4,004 |
0.11% |
|
|
Duncan Hunter |
2816 |
0.08% |
|
|
Tom Tancredo |
1552 |
0.04% |
|
|
|
|
||
|
Total Vote |
3,658,802 |
||
|
|
|
||
|
Rep. Vote |
1,924,346 |
52.59% |
|
|
Dem. Vote |
1,734,456 |
47.41% |
What
is happening is that the voters are trying to take control of the nominating process
from the professional politicians and the media by turning out at the polls in
landslide proportions. Florida’s primary
turnout was 75% of the 2006 off-year election turnout in Florida when there was
a Governor’s race. The reason for this lack
of apathy is that the nation faces serious problems but none of the candidates
seem to be presenting viable solutions.
Now, the voters are winnowing the field before holding the candidates’
feet to the fire on specific issues.
In the Republican primary, the race is between the economy
and foreign policy; where McCain represents foreign policy, a Senator, veteran,
prisoner of war opposed to the torture policy of the Bush administration (having
been tortured himself), but who has never held executive office, indeed, has
almost never been off the public payroll.
Mitt Romney represents it’s the economy stupid, a successful
businessman, son of a businessman, who used his religion to shirk the Vietnam
war, while supporting torture and the war in Iraq. In the Republican party
all the candidates are men, their differences are religion.
In
the Democratic Party, the white men have all lost, leaving a woman and a black
man as the major contenders. The voters
will try to use these candidates and the positions they represent as
instruments with which to evolve a set of policies to be implemented by whoever
is the ultimate winner in November. So,
the Republican primary is hashing out the issues, while the Democratic primary
is hashing out the personalities and ethnicities given the fact that Clinton’s
and Obama’s positions on issues are really quite
similar.
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