Super Tuesday in America was also Fat Tuesday, but if anyone was expecting to gorge on the fruits of a decisive victory in the US presidential race they were out of luck.
For the Democrats, it looked more like a slightly delayed Groundhog Day – yet another day that failed to resolve the tussle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the tightest battle for the party’s nomination in several decades. As the night wore on it became clear that even though she secured a win in the biggest state, California, Mr Obama’s more numerous wins in smaller states across the country kept the two candidates locked in a tight race for delegates to the party’s nominating convention.
On the Republican side, the contest edged closer towards what has seemed nearly inevitable for the last couple of weeks – the steady, somewhat reluctant coronation of John McCain, the Arizona senator. That coronation was delayed, not, as the right wing of the party had hoped, by a Super Tuesday surge of support for Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who had another bad night, but by the unexpected re-emergence of Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor won half a dozen states in his native South and kept the race going at least for another week or two.
On both sides the complexity of an already competitive and multi-sided contest across more than 20 states was further muddied by the fact that winning the nomination is not – as it is in the general election in November - a matter of winning a simple plurality of votes state-by-state. It is determined by gaining a majority of nominating delegates from all the states. And though in the Republican race some states allocate delegates on a winner-take-all basis, many do not. On the Democratic side, all the states award delegates proportionate to the votes cast for each candidate. That means that, while most of the headlines initially focused on the number of states won by each candidate, what really mattered was the breakdown of the delegates – and that was much more broadly distributed among the candidates.
As expected, the remaining Democratic candidates divided the spoils on Super Tuesday. Mrs Clinton’s win in California seemed likely to give her a majority of the delegates there. Both Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama won big majorities (and therefore a haul of delegates) in their home states – Mrs Clinton in New York and Mr Obama in Illinois. Mrs Clinton also secured important majorities in New Jersey and Massachusetts. The last was especially sweet for the Clinton campaign, because it came in a state where Mr Obama had won the endorsements of the state’s two greatest Democratic panjandrums – Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
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Mr Obama performed well in the deep South – adding big majorities in Georgia and Alabama to his win last month in South Carolina. Most striking, according to the exit polls, he managed to win not only black voters in the South but also a sizeable minority of whites. He also bulked up his delegate count with a series of majorities in smaller states including Connecticut, Delaware, North Dakota, Colorado, Idaho and Utah.
And yet Mrs Clinton may still have a slight advantage – not just in overall delegates (she has more so-called Superdelegates – state and federal Democratic officeholders) but in the contours of her support within the Democratic party. Thanks to her continuing dominance among the party’s traditional base - the working class, older, poorer and less educated voters and especially women, she remains the narrow favourite to be the Democratic standard-bearer.
Among Republicans, the focus of the night had been expected to be the increasingly unpleasant battle between Mr McCain and Mr Romney. Instead Mr Huckabee, largely written off after his defeats in South Carolina and Florida, came back strongly across the South, winning his home state of Arkansas as well as Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.
But it is likely to be a Potemkin victory for Mr Huckabee. He has not demonstrated that his populist, Baptist preacher’s message can play outside the South or the Bible-Belt-inclined parts of the Midwest.
Mr McCain notched up crucial wins in the handful of large states that allocate all their delegates to the winner of the popular vote, including New York and New Jersey. He also looked set to win California, the biggest state, though the distribution of delegates there was roughly proportional so his narrow lead mattered less than his wins in other states. Like Mrs Clinton, Mr McCain won states on Super Tuesday across the country – from California in the west to Missouri in the middle to most of the states on the Atlantic seaboard.
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Mr Romney declined to admit defeat but his failure has been spectacular. He has spent more money than any other candidate in the race. In the last week he has been the sole repository of the hopes of the frustrated right wing of the Republican party, which has been used to seeing its favourites ascend to the nomination.
Yet last night, out of 16 primary contests he was able to win only three - his home state of Massachusetts and one, Utah, the home base of his Mormon church – as well as a few less important caucuses.
Mr Romney’s failure represents a stunning defeat not just for him but for the archpriests of the conservative movement. These figures – including religious leaders and talk-radio hosts and senior members of the party in Washington – despise Mr McCain, whose independent streak they regard as intolerable. Despite his fervent support for the Iraq war, many have said they will not vote for him if he is the party’s nominee in November. They deeply dislike Mr Huckabee’s economic populism too.
But Republican voters do not seem to share those views. And even if many do not like Mr McCain it is clear now that they certainly do not regard Mr Romney as the acceptable alternative.
When it was first planned a few years ago, Super Tuesday, the largest single primary day in American electoral history, was widely expected effectively to finish the primary campaigns in both parties, with decisive wins for a candidate in each.
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It certainly hasn’t done that. But it probably has brought us a little closer to knowing who will be the Republican nominee.