Who won Super Tuesday? Election Results.

Most would say that Barack Obama and John McCain were the big winners on Super Tuesday. Although Obama trails Clinton in total delegates, he clearly has more momentum moving into the second half of the primary process. Meanwhile, John McCain virtually wiped the floor with the competition, earning more votes than Romney and Huckabee combined. Dissappointingly, Ron Paul and his faithful followers more or less dissappeared, likely stemming from the media’s refusal to give his campaign any coverage.

The Democratic candidate needs 2,025 delegate votes to advance as their parties selected candidate and right now Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama 783 to 709. While Obama took more states than Hillary on Super Tuesday (13 to Clinton’s 8), Hillary took some of the larger states such as California, New York and New Jersey.

The Democratic race isn’t determined on a winner take all state mentality. Instead, delegate votes are awarded based on a percentage of the primary votes. For that reason, the Obama and Clinton race is still a complete toss up. However, many would award Obama as having the current edge due to momentum. Whereas Hillary dominated the national polls just a few months ago, Obama has nearly pulled up to even. As more Americans embrace his message of change, we look for him to take the clear edge moving forward unless Hillary can somehow right the ship.

The Republican side of Super Tuesday had a little more at stake. And after Super Tuesday, McCain is the clear front runner for Republicans. He may only have 559 of the 1,191 delegate votes needed (51%) thus far, but he also has double the delegate votes of Romney and triple the votes of Huckabee. The lead may be insurmountable.

The success of Mike Huckabee was a surprise, with victories in  Arkansas, West Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. With those big wins, he has stated he will stay in the race until the end, trying to play the spoiler. And by Romney’s measure, he is doing just that.

Accusations that Huckabee is staying in the race to cannibalize the Romney vote, allowing McCain to waltz away with the victory, has sparked tensions. Some are saying Huckabee and McCain have already reached an agreement for the Huckabee to be McCain’s Vice President should he win. In essence, they are trying to “corner the market”. But if their views are so alike, wouldn’t Huckabee be taking most of the votes away from McCain? It’s an interesting debate.

Anything could happen moving forward, but after Super Tuesday it looks like Obama has the Democratic momentum and McCain has the upperhand for the Republicans. Should this “market monopoly” on the Republican side float to the front of the media, it could spell out disaster for the party as a whole moving forward.

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