MIAMI - John McCain won Florida's Republican primary with the help of the state's wildly popular governor, his own war-hero biography and some crafty campaigning. Hillary Clinton won the Democrats' vote on the strength of her experience, her race and a campaign that oddly wasn't a campaign at all.
The strange race for the presidency - some late Republican mudslinging, no slinging of anything by Democrats - has left the biggest swing state for now, giving the country a glimpse of the issues and ideas on the minds of voters of all stripes heading into the Feb. 5 primary.
In Florida, both candidates can thank one group above all others for their win: Hispanics.
Hispanics backed Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin over Barack Obama, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool. Pollsters say the Hispanic vote reflects a fondness for Bill Clinton's White House years and a longstanding trend of voting against black candidates.
The Hispanic numbers were even more striking for McCain: 51 percent of Hispanics backed him, with 15 percent supporting Mitt Romney, who came in a close second, and 25 percent for Rudy Giuliani.
South Florida was supposed to be the sixth borough, New York south for the former Big Apple mayor. But McCain shattered that, winning Miami-Dade by a 37-32 margin, boosted by the support of Cuban-Americans and the surprise endorsement of Charlie Crist, the wildly popular governor of Florida.
Day-to-day tracking polls by Crist's advisors indicated McCain was losing before Crist stepped in Saturday. And the exit polls showed that 42 percent of Republicans rated Crist's endorsement as important on Election Day.
"That's a really significant number," said Crist's longtime advisor George LeMieux. "Charlie Crist clearly matters."
But so does John McCain and his story and his ability to control the story. Campaigning is all about defining the narrative, defining yourself before your opponent defines you.
McCain's story: A former POW in Vietnam whose biography was particularly appealing to Cuban-Americans, who suffered their own torments from a Communist government.
On the Democratic side, Clinton sought to tell her own story about the election: That Florida matters, and therefore she does, too. Clinton popped into South Florida Tuesday night and addressed a rally in Davie after the vote was in, trying to capture a headline to show that, after the big loss in South Carolina, she can win in a big state.
But because Obama didn't campaign here, it's unclear just what Florida's vote means, because polls and election results elsewhere show that his support ticks up wherever he campaigns. Absent a real campaign, the Democratic election was more of a name-recognition beauty contest.
Democratic strategist Jeff Garcia said Clinton's strong support in the Hispanic community is striking. He said it wasn't so much a reflection of a racially balkanized electorate as "strictly a function of them being very familiar with one candidate, and not familiar with another."
Clinton won every age and race demographic, except for black voters, who backed Obama over her 70-27. Her support among white voters was commanding, 53 percent to Obama's 23 percent.
Her greatest strength: the perception that she has more experience. Among the 21 percent of voters who said experience matters most, 83 percent favored Clinton, and only 3 percent chose Obama.
Experience was also McCain's strong suit. He relied not just on Crist, but on a strong network of legislators and congressmen who helped turn out the vote and allow him to win early and absentee votes in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, despite Romney's strong field staff and organization.
Surprisingly, exit polls show that those who are the most worried about the economy looked to McCain, not business-tycoon Romney, to fix the problem. About 39 percent of those who thought the economy was bad backed McCain, compared to 27 percent who supported Romney.
Another oddity: McCain got 28 percent of the evangelical vote, virtually tying the 30 percent won by both Mike Huckabee and Romney.
Huckabee, a Baptist pastor, got strong support in the Panhandle, sapping votes from Romney. Huckabee came close to taking third place from Giuliani. More-conservative voters favored Romney, while moderate ones and abortion-rights supporters favored McCain, even though his anti-abortion record is more consistent than Romney's.
McCain also defined himself as the "straight talker" _ and was seen as such by voters, according to the exit polls _ but he wasn't above telling a tall tale about Romney to gain an edge, suggesting in the last days of the campaign that his opponent wanted to quickly withdraw from Iraq. Romney took the bait Saturday, demanding an apology from McCain that never came but that made Romney look defensive.
And in politics, when you're busy explaining, you're losing.
"That was a tactical error," LeMieux said of Romney's dwelling on McCain's attack.
"The more this campaign is about national security, the better off McCain is," said Todd Harris, a veteran campaigner and former spokesman for candidate Fred Thompson before he withdrew from the race. "The Romney campaign never should have allowed McCain to head-fake them into changing the narrative away from the economy."
Romney has another shot Feb. 5. And he has more money. But McCain has the most important story on the campaign trail: Momentum and electability. Giuliani might drop out, swinging his votes and, perhaps, support to McCain while Huckabee sticks around and syphons Romney votes.
Said Huckabee of his own campaign: "It's a remarkable story that's not even close to being over."
That's even more true for McCain.
(Miami Herald staff writer Rob Barry contributed to this report.)
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