Mitt Romney coasted to a win in presidential preference voting by Maine Republicans on Saturday, claiming his third victory in a caucus state and fourth overall.
The former Massachusetts governor had 52 percent of the vote with 68 percent of the towns holding caucuses reporting. John McCain trailed with 21 percent, Ron Paul was third with 19 percent, and Mike Huckabee had 6 percent. Undecided votes accounted for 2 percent.
The nonbinding votes, the first step toward electing 18 Maine delegates to the Republican National Convention, took place in public schools, Grange halls, fire stations and town halls across the state.
The Associated Press uses presidential preferences expressed in those caucuses to project the number of national convention delegates each candidate will have when they are chosen at Maine's state convention, calculating that Romney will wind up with all 18 delegates when all is said and done.
Read it here.
UPDATE:
Another small sliver of hope: Reuters reports that Romney has a small lead in California polls going into tomorrow's election.
Romney leads McCain by 37 percent to 34 percent in California. The poll's margin of error is 2.9 percentage points. "California could be Romney's last stand," Zogby said. "If he wins there, it may not be a whole new ballgame, but it can give those Republicans who oppose McCain hope they still have a chance to stop him."Read it here.
But all this is going to be for naught. McCain's lead is probably insurmountable. Here's a visual representation of recent polling data from Pollster.com, the best free web source on political polling. As you can easily see, McCain has a comfortable lead in all but a few states.
