Florida Primary: McCain Wins, Rudy Will Quit -- As Clinton and Obama Duel Over Delegates

By: Greg Mitchell Exit polls and the first returns suggest a tight race in the crucial Florida primary between Mitt Romney and John McCain -- while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have their own duel going.

We'll be updating below from the top.

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10:10: NBC confirms Rudy to quit tomorrow. Romney will fight on and has the cash to do it. Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan had given him hope by agreeing that McCain's platform is (to paraphrase) "no jobs, let the illegals stay, and more wars." Try to run and win on that, they joked.

A number of Florida voting glitches. There's a running joke about Rush Limbaugh's touch-tone screen freezing up. It might even be true.

9:20: NBC calls it for McCain, following the other networks. Close but no cigar for Romney. Rudy about to speak. He did beat Ron Paul this time!

9:00 Time's The Page blog says Rudy will quit tomorrow and endorse McCain in California. Chris Matthews points out, however, that McCain is "broke" and "looks tired." Can he keep up the pace?

8:45: Hillary takes the stage, in Florida, to declare "victory." MSNBC follows her remarks for five minutes, then cuts away. Will the flim-flam blunt Obama's charge?

McCain widens lead but still 35%-32% lead with 46% in. Huckabee concedes, and promises to "play all nine innings of this ball game."

8:15: Tim Russert pushing Rudy out the door. Time to get out is NOW he declares and don't wait for utter humiliation of Super Tuesday. Free your one delegate, endorse McCain, help him win New York and then declare that his campaign was a success because he was able to get McCain the nomination. Now or never.

McCain lead down to 1% with 30% in.

Exit polls show majority of Democratic voters cast their ballots a week or more ago. People who voted in the past month backed Obama, while she easily carried the earlier voters. Half the voters today said the Kennedys' endorsement means something to them.

8:00: Polls close, GOP race too tight to call, but with 19% im McCain has slight lead over Romney at about 34%-31%.

Clinton leads Obama by about 48% to 28% in the non-binding primary that was not supposed to count.

7:40: With 7% of the vote in, the two GOP candidates are in a dead heat, with Giuliani and Huckabee trailing badly. Polls don't close in the Pandhandle until 8 p.m.

Clinton has promised to come to the state and declare "victory" even though she agreed, with the other Democrats, that the vote would not count and delegates not seated.
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