Polls are closed in Florida, and we're liveblogging the results of the Republican presidential primary.
Results: AP (By county) | CNN | Google | Politico
FLORIDA TV AD BREAKDOWN: 68% of ads were anti-Gingrich, 23% anti-Romney, 9% pro-Gingrich, 0.1% pro-Romney (via @jonkarl)
— @thinkprogress via TweetDeck
4:03 PM PT (David Nir): Via email, CBS news says:
The raw vote totals will come in shortly after 7 pm ET and then the exit polls will be released at 8 pm ET (when the last polls close in the state).
4:05 PM PT:
Can we just get past tonight and make the new narrative that Romney needs to spend 6:1 to get any momentum? kthxbai
— @pandagon via web
4:06 PM PT: The Pandagon tweet above makes an excellent point -- fact is, Gingrich has gotten blown out of the water in terms of money in Florida, an expensive state to compete in. His casino mogul sugar daddy wrote that $5 million check, and his campaign claims he raised $5 million since South Carolina, but that's chump change compared to the cash Romney and his establishment allies had, and it showed.
4:09 PM PT (David Nir): The first votes are coming in, probably early votes. Romney's up big, with 52% in this initial batch.
4:10 PM PT: Early vote numbers show Romney with a 30,000-vote lead. Some media reports suggested that number would be closer to 50-60,000. We don't know if this is ALL early votes, or some.
4:11 PM PT: The early vote lead is now 45,000, so yeah, they're clearly still counting them.
4:15 PM PT:
This is the hour that tests cable news anchors' bantering skills
— @mikememoli via web
4:20 PM PT:
#CNNelections Exit poll: 39% of FL GOP unhappy with field; 53% of Gingrich voters unhappy if Romney nominee. Bile, bitterness & bad blood.
— @PaulBegala via Twitter for iPad
4:25 PM PT (David Nir): Right now, CNN's website appears to be the fastest - they have Romney with 291K votes (51%), but their percentage of precincts reporting looks to be way too high, compared to sites like AP and Politico.
4:25 PM PT: ABC:
Here’s all you need to know about the Florida campaign: amidst the blizzard of campaign ads there was only one positive pro-Romney ad — a single Spanish language TV ad.
That’s right. Mitt Romney and his allies spent more than $15 million on TV ads — only one was positive and it was in a foreign language. It ran a total of 15 times statewide.
4:27 PM PT (David Nir): Yeah, so basically, CNN thinks 30% of precincts have reported, but Politico has it at about 10% - but they offer similar vote totals. Not sure what's going on here, but CNN may be counting early votes differently.
4:29 PM PT (Kaili Joy Gray): The liveblogging continues in the next thread.