Florida Primary Results

Florida Primary Results - According to several media outlets, including CNN and NBC, John McCain has won the Florida republican presidential primary. McCain narrowly beat out Mitt Romney for the big win on Tuesday night.

With 80% of the precincts reporting, McCain had 36% of the vote to Mitt Romney's 31%. This looked like a statistical dead heat for most of the day until McCain pulled away later in the night.

"Tonight, my friends, we celebrate. Tomorrow, it's back to work," McCain said to his supporters as he claimed victory. "We have a ways to go, but we're getting close, and for that, you all have my profound thanks."

What may be even more important in the Florida primary's results is the Rudy Guiliani finished a very distant third with only about 15% of the vote. Guiliani has put most of his proverbial eggs in Florida's basket, but his sliding as a front-runner for the GOP party might have cost him dearly in the long run.

While Guiliani's campaign is not officially over yet, it is almost certainly done in the eyes of the voters. It is now being rumored that he will drop out of the race soon and he will support John McCain and his bid to be the next President of the United States.

Huckabee finished in a very disappointing third place with 14% of the vote, but unlike Guiliani, Huckabee already has a win in his pocket from the first contest of the season in Iowa and he pledged to play "all nine innings of this ballgame," on Tuesday night,

In a very, very meaningless race on the democratic side, Hillary Clinton won overwhelmingly with 50% of the vote. Obama finished with 33% and John Edwards finished a distant third with 15%.

The reason that this race is purely symbolic is because Florida was penalized all of its democratic delegates for holding its primary before February 5^th. This means that nothing is gained by the winner of this primary except some possible momentum.

The republicans were also penalized for moving up their primary, but only half of the states 114 republican delegates were taken away, keeping Florida a big GOP contest.

Both on the republican side and the democratic side voters turned out in record numbers. It probably didn't hurt that the bright Florida sun was out today, but the issues of one of the most important primaries in a long time brought many of the voters out.