Island residents spoke with their votes today and chose Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to represent the Democratic and Republican parties respectively to be president of the United States of America.
    Voter turnout was large with 3,336 people filled in the ovals for the man, or woman, whom they thought was best fit to lead the country.
    The turnout was the largest for a primary election in recent island history with over 40 percent of registered voters casting ballots. Other hotly contested races in which islander came to the polls were 1992, when 32% of voters participated and in 2000 where 28% pulled the lever of their candidate of choice, according to Nantucket Town Clerk Catherine Flanagan Stover.
    Obama received 1,395 votes to Clinton’s 893.
    Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney barley held off national front-runner John McCain on his home turf, defeating the Arizona Senator 454 to 427. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee received 43 votes and Texas Congressmen Ron Paul took 27 votes.
    Clinton also projected to win state wide, according to the Associated Press.
    Obama scored an early victory in Georgia yesterday where polls closed earlier than most other states, according to the Associated Press.
Other early projections had Obama wining his home state of Illinois and Clinton taking New York, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
The Republican race was too close to call for this edition of the Nantucket Independent.
Mike Huckabee won the Republican caucus in West Virginia, as well as his home state of Arkansas’ primary. Huckabee is hoping for strong support in the South and throughout the Bible belt, playing on his Christian conservative values.
Romney was projected to win Massachusetts, much like he did Nantucket, but McCain took Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey.
    Obama had been trailing Clinton in many of the National polls leading up to today’s primary, known as Super Tuesday, but has closed the gap within recent weeks, coming off strong a showing in South Carolina, where he easily defeated both Clinton and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, who has since dropped out of the race.
Neither Clinton nor Obama is likely to be declared the Democratic presidential candidate even after polls closed across the 22 states holding elections yesterday, while the Republicans could see either Romney or McCain emerge because of differences in how delegates for the two parties are counted.
    On the republican side, the states have a winner take all policy where even a candidate who receives 51% of the vote, takes all of that states delegates. There are over 1,000 up for grabs for the Grand Ole Party. While it is unlikely that one Republicans will garner enough votes to get the nomination based on yesterday’s results, McCain could put enough distance between himself and both Romney and Huckabee to make the race all but over.
    On the Democratic side, the delegates are awarded as a proportion of the vote depending on which districts vote for each candidate. If a candidate gets only 40 percent of the popular vote, they lose the state, but still get 40 percent of the delegates.
For example, while Clinton was declared the winner of the New Hampshire primary and her campaign benefited greatly from the momentum generated by the win, the small number of delegates the Granite State has was actually split evenly between her and Obama.
    The Democratic candidate needs to amass just over 2,000 delegates to be declared the winner and even with 1,700 up for grabs yesterday, the split will likely not lead to a winner being declared.
    Massachusetts has 121 delegates for the democrats and 48 for the Republicans.