Michael Barone called it a "safe-cracking" victory--all the tumblers had to fall into place for McCain to win.

The exit polls tell an interesting story.

South Florida Hispanics went for McCain by an overwhelming margin--54%. Will you not be surprised that Mel Martinez, a McCain collaborator on amnesty, put the word out through his machine that a vote for McCain was a vote in their interest. Notably, Romney had pretty much conceded the South Florida vote to Giuliani and didn't really compete there.

There it is--the just-shy of 100,000 votes that put McCain over the top. Won in the one state where a significant number of Hispanics vote in the Republican primary.

However, the safe-cracker analogy may have been more apt than Barone intended. Cubans may have voted for a undeclared Democrat, but apparently a lot of declared Democrats and independents voted for McCain in spite of what was supposed to be a closed primary.

Under Florida Republican party rules, someone who wants to vote in the Republican party primary has to register with the party 30 days before the election. Yet the CNN exit polls clearly show a massive 17% of respondents were declared independents and another 3% Democrats!

I suppose its possible that they all changed their party affiliation a month ago so they could vote for McCain, but it seems more likely that we've been outmaneuvered by McCain loyalists in the Florida party that rejiggered the rules for "their guys" benefit.

Something stinks here.

Michelle Malkin notes the same problem.

Yesterday afternoon, I noted reports of independents voting in the closed Florida Republican primary and pointed out the state law requiring that voters establish party ID by registering 29 days before an election.

Flip Pidot took a look at exit poll results posted at CNN (see page 4) and wonders how 20 percent of GOP votes were cast by non-Republicans:

One breakout that puzzles me though is the vote share by party identification. Romney and McCain were tied among Republicans (33-33), while McCain won [independents] 44-23…

If I’m reading the poll correctly, it suggests 17% of Republican primary voters identified themselves as having no major party affiliation, while 3% identified themselves as registered Democrats.

So was it closed or not? Pidot probes further:

Exit polls rely on the accuracy of the verbal reponses given by the pollees and of course, aren’t definitively dispositive of anything at all. But 17% of 1,500 respondents self-identifying as independents who voted Republican means something irregular, unless hundreds of voters chose to tell pollsters a similar lie…

…I e-mailed that county’s supervisor of elections at around 2 pm on primary day to inquire about the reported irregularity, but have yet to receive a response.

Given the possibility that as much as 20% of the 2 million GOP votes cast today came from independents and Democrats (enough to change the outcome), I think we do now need some answers…

Anyone got any?

The exit poll had 1516 respondents, which makes it a big sample compared with the 500-800 respondents typical of all the tracking polls. Using an accuracy of +/- 4%, McCain would have picked up 65,000-70,000 additional votes, accounting for between 3.4 and 3.7% of his plurality.

Front-runner my ass.

Ed Morrissey points out that closed primary states typically have a significant contingent of independents who register before an election and then reregister as independent immediately afterwards. That's plausible I suppose, but 20%?

Its also besides the point. The media is crowing about the end of the Reagan coalition because McCain "won over" Republicans in Florida, but the reality is that his victory is entirely due--as usual, to independents. In any event, the backlash today on various blogs, talk radio callers, etc... is INTENSE. Everyone seems to have been willing to be polite to McCain when they thought he had no chance, but now that he is threatening the party's viability and assuring a Clinton/Obama victory, conservatives are mobilizing. It will be interesting to see what the effect will be on Feb 5.

That's up to you folks.