Duncan Hunter

Duncan Hunter was one of the third or fourth tier candidates and dropped out immediately after South Carolina. Utterly predictable since congressmen never ever get to be president. But what is interesting is that he turned around to endorse Huckabee:

Hunter continued, "Mike Huckabee is a man of outstanding character and integrity. I saw that character over the last year of campaigning and was greatly impressed. The other Republican candidates have many strengths and I wish them all well. My personal choice is Mike Huckabee."

Hunter was and is a conservative through and through and hit all the major conservative bullet points. But Huckabee has been suffering under withering fire from conservatives for not being one of them. At the same time all the conservatives loved Hunter's positions as well. So this was a little bit of a shocker. Still, this should not make any difference.

And then there were six in the GOP race. California congressman Duncan Hunter is dropping out, after a miserable showing in Nevada and pretty much everywhere else. I spoke briefly with Hunter's spokesman Bob Bevill, who said the candidate spent most of his time in recent weeks dispelling rumors that his campaign was already toast. The loss in the Silver State today was the nail in the coffin.

"The media has a 'vote someone off the island' mentality and Duncan Hunter was a casualty of that," Bevill said.

Each of the two national Party's have vastly different approaches to their nominating process from the number of delegates to the fashion in which they are allocated. Here's the current delegate count:

Among Democrats: Hillary Clinton leads with 175; Barack Obama 75 and John Edwards 46.

That's right, Obama trails Clinton in real delegates by a substantial margin at this point. There will be 2,025 Democratic National Committee delegates who gather in Denver, Colorado to choose their nominee. 795 of these delegates are so-called "Super Delegates." These voters are essentially the "status quo" Party Bosses (national committee people) and Members of Congress.

Here's how the current math breaks down:Clinton has 160 "Super Delegates" plus 15 from Iowa. Obama has 59 from "Super Delegates" and 16 from Iowa. Edwards has 32 from "Super Delegates" and 14 from Iowa.

Among Republicans: Mitt Romney leads with eight, Fred Thompson three and Duncan Hunter one.

That's right, Mike Huckabee currently has zero delegates. The same is true for John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. That's because of the 1,039 delegates needed to win the GOP convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, only 78 will be awarded before Super Tuesday's contests (2/5/2008) and technically on the GOP side, there were no delegates awarded in the Iowa vote. They will be likely awarded based up on the results later at a state convention. The 12 delegates awarded come from Wyoming's GOP Caucus which still has two more delegates to award at a convention in March.