Why did John McCain win the 2008 Republican presidential nomination?

[UWS]

The social conservative vote was divided between Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson, which explains McCain's success in southern states and led him to victory in the crucial South Carolina primary.

In addition, if you look at several 2008 primary exit polls, despite Romney's business experience, John McCain was more trusted than Romney on the economy. And also McCain was strongly advantaged by voters who wanted a candidate with the right experience due to McCain's large political and foreign policy experience. Meanwhile Romney has been described as a flip flopper on gun rights, abortion and gay marriage.

John McCain won the Florida primary thanks to the endorsements of Mel Martinez and Charlie Crist and also by accusing Romney of supporting a timetable for a phased military withdrawal from Iraq. McCain's victory in Florida led him to his ascension as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

The moreover that it was after that Giuliani dropped out of the race and endorsed McCain, thus uniting all the moderate/independent wing of the GOP behind McCain while the right-wing of the GOP was still divided between Romney and Huckabee, which ensured a strong performance by McCain in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama and handed Oklahoma and Missouri to McCain. So before Super Tuesday, the endorsements to McCain were multiplying (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rick Perry, etc.). And by sweeping the northeastern states and big states with large urban population, including New York, Illinois and California, McCain strongly reinforced his delegate lead at the point of leading Romney to drop out.

Thanks to his foreign policy experience, he easily won Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. where an important part of primary voters were either in or connected to the military. And due to this momentum, he won Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, and thus McCain clinched the nomination.

[UWS]

I believe as a McCain supporter that Mike Huckabee’s win in Iowa over Mitt Rommey was a victory for McCain in the sense that this deprived Romney of momentum in New Hampshire and it was New Hampshire that launched McCain ahead of Republican field

[UWS]

According to this documentary, John McCain was the only primary candidate who said that Bush Administration had to adopt the Petraeus strategy during Iraq War, which he attributed to the improving of the situation in Iraq, which helped him win among Republicans and Independents during the primaries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKVQW8Z0AFg

[UWS]

Another reason why the Florida primary is drastically decisive in helping John McCain to win the nomination is because before that primary California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger remained neutral and refrained from endorsing either McCain or Giuliani as Schwarzenegger counted both men as friends. But when John McCain won the Florida primary, Giuliani dropped out of the race and endorsed McCain, which made the choice a lot easier for Schwarzenegger and led him to endorse McCain, which helped him a lot to win the California primary in a fairly close race as McCain won it by 8 percentage points

With California along with New York and Illinois, McCain’s delegate lead was insurmountable

[UWS]

What has also helped John McCain to win Republican nomination is Fred Thompson as Thompson not only hurt Huckabee among social conservatives in SC but he also hammered Huckabee on conservative stances as he accused Huckabee of having overseen a net tax increase as Arkansas governor, having pushed merit scholarships for the children of illegal immigrants, having suggested he would sign a nation-wide ban on smoking in public places and having commented that the Bush administration had demonstrated an "arrogant bunker mentality" towards foreign policy matters]
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-presidential-candidates-debate-myrtle-beach-south-carolina
Meanwhile, McCain benefited from the fact that 25 % of SC's electorate was composed of veterans and he emphasized on the success of the troop surge in Iraq to appeal among them in a state where the War on Terror and Iraq combined together was a very important issue with 31 % of voters saying that these issues were the most important issues.

[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.

[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

[UWS]

And Illinois was also favoring McCain partly because Chicago and the Color Counties accounted for 1 or 2/3 of the Republican primary electorate in Illinois