Net Results

The early vote totals posted by Florida officials show there is one clear result: Hillary Clinton is winning by a wide margin in a primary demoted to the equivalent of a massive straw poll by the scheduling dispute between national and Florida Democratic officials. Clinton, according to the state division of election's Web site, has 50percent of the vote to 29percent for Barack Obama and 17 percent for John Edwards.

With John McCain (33.9 percent) and Mitt Romney (33.4 percent) running neck and neck on the Republican side (as indicated in pre-primary polls), the only certain thing appears to be that neither Rudy Giuliani nor Mike Huckabee is making the impact he needed in Florida. Giuliani, who hardly registered in earlier contests and spent most of the campaign so far in Florida, had 14.1 percent, while Huckabee, who needed a strong showing to establish himself as at least a strong regional favorite, had 13.7 percent.

The Republican contest has more tangible meaning for the campaign going forward. While the Jan. 29 GOP primary also broke Republican National Committee scheduling rules, the RNC penalized the state just half of its delegates and permitted its candidates to run full-fledged campaigns. The Democratic National Committee, on the other hand, stripped its Florida affiliate of all its delegates and persuaded the candidates not to actively campaign in Florida.