Inheriting Huckabee's fans

With Super Tuesday approaching and Mike Huckabee's campaign fading, pundits are starting to wonder who will capture Huckabee's ardent evangelical base: John McCain or Mitt Romney?

A Pew Forum poll, conducted before Romney won Michigan, hints that McCain may have an edge. McCain garnered 25% of the national conservative evangelical vote, while Romney drew only 12%. Evangelicals may not love McCain, but do they like him better than Mitt Romney?

Both candidates face challenges. Romney is Mormon - a difficulty for many evangelical voters - and only recently pro-life. McCain has irked evangelical voters with issues like campaign finance reform and his remark that leaders of the Religious Right are "agents of intolerance."

McCain has since mended fences, telling Jerry Falwell he spoke in haste. Romney worked to woo evangelicals with his speech on religion in America. His efforts paid off in Michigan, where he beat both Huckabee and McCain for the evangelical vote; but McCain's evangelical support has also grown since Iowa. In South Carolina, where evangelicals accounted for 60% of the voters, Huckabee pulled 43% of the evangelical vote, McCain got 27%, Fred Thompson got 15%, and Mitt Romney got 11%.

This was before Thompson dropped out. Will his voters go to Romney or McCain? John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum, guesses Thompson voters may defect to Huckabee or Romney since voters see McCain as less conservative. In the first race since Thompson dropped out, Huckabee, Romney, and McCain almost evenly split the evangelical vote. Romney tied with Huckabee for 30% of the evangelical votes in Florida, barely beating McCain's 28%.

Analysts say it's difficult to predict since the evangelical base is neither as homogeneous nor as family-values- driven as people assume. A Wall Street Journal / NBC poll indicates that evangelical voters are more concerned about federal spending and terrorism than abortion and gay rights. Lester Feder writes that evangelicals are divided when it comes to issues like campaign finance reform and immigration. Green said Huckabee supporters tend to be more moderate on economics and foreign policy.