The Kansas City Star reports, Huckabee wins Kansas Republican caucus
With all votes counted, Huckabee had 11,627 votes, or 60 percent, to McCain’s 4,587, or 24 percent. Texas Congressman Ron Paul had 2,182, or 11 percent. Other candidates were far behind.
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Huckabee walks away with all 36 delegates that were on the line Saturday. The party will send three other “superdelegates” to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.
Republican officials expected about 15,000 voters Saturday, but wound up with 20,009 statewide. While that total beat expectations, it fell short of the 37,000 Democrats who showed up Tuesday to decide between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Given that I initially expected Romney to have a good weekend (before, of course, he went and dropped out), I am not surprised that Huckabee won Kansas.
On the one hand, it is embarrassing for McCain’s sake to lose, even given that is clearly going to be the nominee. On the other hand, McCain has done poorly in all the caucuses and we are talking about a rather small number of voters here (20,009).
Of course, the fact that 11,627 Kansans were motivated enough to show just to vote against the eventual nominee does illustrate something we already know: there are a number of Republicans who aren’t too excited about a McCain candidacy.
And note that even when there is no cost to voting for Paul he was only able to win 11%.
To put the vote numbers in perspective, 736,456 votes were cast for Bush in Kansas in 2024 and 434,993 were cast for Kerry. As such, 20k voters don’t represent an especially large proportion of the potential electorate.
