The winner-take-all Republican primary awarded McCain with 57 delegates. This was his second win over Romney in nearly as many weeks. A spatial distribution of the share of votes at the county level (see the map below) shows an interesting pattern where bright hues indicate higher share of votes for a candidate compared to all other candidates. McCain won more votes in 47 counties than any other candidate (counties shown in red), while Romney had plurality of votes in 17 counties (green) and Huckabee with an overall showing of 4th place, managed to claim Holmes county (blue), in Florida panhandle. On the other hand, Giuliani, who invested so heavily in just one state strategy, ignoring all the early primary/caucuses came in a distant third with not a single county to show for all his concentrated efforts/resources in Florida. Late today, Giuliani annouced that he was ending his presidential bid.

Color key: McCain counties = Red, Romney counties = Green and Huckabee counties = Blue

Vote counts by counties for McCain and Giuliani shows a very strong correlation coefficient of 0.999048, indicating that both were going after similar constituency within the Republican party and that McCain’s gain was Giuliani’s loss. Below are vote counts for the top five counties for each of the four candidates.

McCain’s top five counties by vote counts are Miami-Dade (~75,500), Pinnellas (~44,000), Broward (~40,660), Palm Beach (~38,480), Hillsborough (~37,800).
Giuliani’s top five counties by vote counts are: Miami-Dade (~ 40,250), Pinellas (~19,280), Broward (~18,660), Palm Beach (15,975), Hillsborough (~15,850).
Romney’s top five counties by vote counts are: Duval (~36,650), Pinellas (~34,970), Lee (~34,140), Hillsborough (~30,450), Palm Beach (~29,230).
Huckabee’s top five counties by vote counts are: Orange (~15,710), Duval (~13,830), Hillsborough (~12,840), Pinellas (~12,350), Brevard (~11,580).
Overall, out of 1.9 million votes cast in the closed primary, McCain won 36% (689,000) votes to Romneys’ 31% (~593,000), followed by Giuliani (~279,880) and Huckabee (~258,300).

For detailed datasets go to GeoCommons and search with keywords “Florida Republican Primary” and explore interactive thematic and heatmaps of vote counts for each of the top four republican candidates.

Popularity: 18% [?]