by Les Zsoldos

Created on: February 01, 2008

A few months ago I didn't think John McCain had any hope of securing the Republican nomination. In the summer of 2007, his campaign was in complete disarray, he had a lack of funding and polls placed him far behind other candidates. However, John McCain refused to concede defeat. Astonishingly, he's now the Republican presidential frontrunner and appears to have a very good chance of securing the Republican nomination. He's recently received the endorsements of Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California. His chances of winning the primaries in New York and California are now excellent.

How did he do it? The most credit goes to John McCain for never failing to believe in himself and turning around his campaign. He didn't win Iowa but won enough votes to take some momentum into New Hampshire, a state with many independent voters. As in 2000, he won the New Hampshire primary and then took South Carolina. That was a critical moment for the Arizona senator.

South Carolina was critical because he lost it in 2000 to President Bush and never really recovered. If he'd lost South Carolina this time, it's possible that he'd have lost critical momentum. The next state which Senator McCain captured was Florida, a state on which Rudy Giuliani had invested considerable time and money. Fortunately for John McCain, Rudy Giuliani not only dropped out of the race after the disappointing result in Florida but also endorsed him.

Rudy Giuliani's strategy of ignoring the early primaries and focussing on Florida failed. It's true that the many social conservatives in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina were unlikely to vote for him, but by ignoring those states, the other candidates picked up important momentum and secured lots of media coverage. The longer Rudy Giuliani was out of the news, the more voters seemed to forget about him. He left the impression that he didn't care about the voters in all states but only the ones in certain states. Of course if he'd won in Florida, his strategy might have worked but by the time Florida voted, candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney had picked up extensive media coverage and considerable momentum.

Now that John McCain will probably be the Republican nominee for president, does he have a chance of becoming the next president? Many experts such as Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's former advisor, believe that many voters prefer a Democrat. At the same time, it's not wise to rule out

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