Huckabee drops out, but wins four RI delegates

Last night, John McCain received the 1191 delegates that he needed in order to win the Republican nomination. Huckabee had promised that he would drop out if McCain got that "magic number", so his speech didn't come as a surprise. In his speech he hinted to a possible 2012 run and vowed to continue fighting for the conservative positions that he based his campaign on. He's only fifty-two years old so he has plenty of time to gain more credentials and name recognition before the next election.

As far as Rhode Island's primary, McCain won with around 65% of the vote (around 16k votes)
and Huckabee came in second with 22% of the vote (around 6K votes). That's a pretty impressive percentage for Huckabee if you take into account that our Republican Party consists of many RINO's, which is why RI is the most democratic state in the US. When my dad went to vote, he did an exit poll on the condition that the polling person would give him some information on the likely results. She said that it didn't look good for Huckabee, and it was around a 25 to 1 ratio between Huckabee and McCain supporters. The real results of our town was more like 2/1 for McCain, not nearly as bad as the poll person had said (lesson: don't trust exit polls). (click here to see town results)

This year RI allotted delegates in proportion, instead of the winner take all scheme it had in previous elections. That meant that with 22% of the votes, Huckabee won 4 delegates to the convention. Here you can see the results for the Huckabee delegate vote count in RI.

My Dad placed first place, which means he possible will go to the Republican National Convention in September!

Thanks to the hard work of a lot of people- our Meetup group, delegate candidates, sign holders, etc.- Rhode Island will have given Huckabee about the same delegates that he got in South Carolina and more delegates then he got in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, Michigan or Nevada.

Also, through this election, we've been able to setup a great infrastructure for future local and presidential elections. So, go Huckabee 2012!

This post was written by Aidan. Silas is at a National Open Debate Tournament in TX. He will be back Sunday.