Why did John McCain win the 2008 Republican presidential nomination?

[UWS]

McCain's surge started even before the primary season as the Boston Globe endorsed him in mid-December 2007 which was a blow to Mitt Romney as it is his home town newspaper and it propelled McCain ahead of Giuliani in New Hampshire and it likely helped him win the New Hampshire primary.

[UWS]

Also what helped John McCain winning the FL Republican presidential primary was his strong performance among the Cuban-American population as he got 50 % of the Cuban-American vote and other groups of Hispanics in FL voted 51 % for John McCain and Hispanic voters accounted for 10 % of the Republican electorate in this primary. That is due notably to John McCain's support for immigration reform and also due to McCain courting the Cuban-American vote by arguing that during his military service he was pilot on board of a US aircraft career involved in the Cuban missile crisis and he fought communism in Vietnam. The moreover that John McCain mentionned that there were pro-Castro Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces personel who tortured fellow POWs during Vietnam War. As a result, John McCain got strong support among Cuban-American voters, helping him to win the FL Republican presidential primary and to ascend as the frontrunner in GOP primary race and propelled him to the Republican presidential nomination«

https://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/29/fl.polls.gop/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_participation_in_the_Vietnam_War

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/28/uselections2008.usa

[UWS]

Strong support among Latino voters were also key to John McCain winning the California Republican primary.

When it comes to FL, 27 % of the primary voters have served in the military and McCain won them by 7. The moreover that General Norman Schwarzkopf, a Florida resident, endorsed McCain a few days before the Florida Republican primary and was, like McCain, advocating for the adoption of the Petraeus strategy by the Bush Administration in Iraq

[UWS]

It also helped John McCain to have earned massive Asian-American support in California primary as Asian-Americans composed 6 % of the Republican primary electorate in 2008 and McCain earned over 60 % of the Republican Asian-American vote, which definitely helped him in areas like San Francisco and San Diego where there are huge concentration of Vietnamese Americans

[UWS]

The endorsements from Giuliani and Pataki played a major role in John McCain’s success in the primaries as McCain performed strongly among voters in New York who were concerned about the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. That’s also why McCain won the New Jersey primary so easily in a state that was the location of an attempted terrorist attack in Fort Dix in October 2007. It also helped McCain win in Connecticut which southern coast is close to New York and where McCain is endorsed by Lieberman.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The R party had buyers remorse with Bush W who should of never won in 2000 and McVain should have

[UWS]

And also McCain was, along with Lieberman, an author of the legislation to create the 9/11 Commission, which I guess also helped him in states like New York and New Jersey on Super Tuesday

[muon2]

I spent the summer and fall of 2007 organizing and then collecting signatures to get McCain on the IL ballot. Even though McCain's campaign largely fell apart mid-2007, I found that republican voters throughout the fall were happy to sign petitions to get him on the ballot. The response was generally along the lines that McCain was a known quantity and would be solid on the key issue of Iraq.

IL had moved its primary to the beginning of Feb to boost Obama, so all primary petitions had to be submitted before Thanksgiving. That freed me to help in IA as a surrogate, including a position as a caucus-night surrogate in Scott county. When McCain had a virtual 3rd place (many early reports had him running in clear 3rd which helped cement the national come-back narrative), we were ecstatic as that was the target to move on to NH.

IL and the rest of Super Tuesday was less than 5 weeks after IA and the ground game was decidedly picking up. IL elects district delegates directly by delegate name with the associated candidate, and McCain's success got me a ticket to the RNC in St Paul as a floor delegate.