Giuliani Falters As Mccain and Romney Battle for Top Finish

Rudy Giuliani's hopes of becoming the next US president effectively ended tonight after exit polls showed him coming well behind rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney in the all-important Florida primary.

The exit polls were too close to call a winner between McCain and Romney.

With only 35% of the results in, McCain had 34% of the vote, Romney 32% and Giuliani, who was the Republican favorite throughout most of last year, lagging well behind on 16%. Mike Huckabee was on 13%.

The victor in the state's Republican contest go into next week's Super Tuesday contest - in which about half the country will be eligible to vote - with an enormous advantage.

The last few days of the campaign have been acrimonious, with Romney, trying to win over social conservatives, labeling McCain as a "liberal democrat". McCain responded by claiming Romney had "flip-flopped" over the Iraq war.

Giuliani, the former New York mayor, is to announce this morning whether he will remain in the race. Last night was a humiliation for him, having put all his time and effort into Florida and ignoring the other early contests.

Responding today to questions about whether he would remain in the race, he said: "Wednesday morning, we'll make a decision." He was scheduled to take part in a Republican televised debate in California tomorrow evening but may decide his time is up.

Just before the polls closed, his campaign manager, Mike Duhaime, insisted he still intended to participate in the debate.

The exit polls suggest it was a catastrophic mistake for him to adopt an unconventional strategy for the early caucuses and primaries. Unlike his rivals, he chose to ignore the traditional campaign schedule that begins with Iowa and continues through New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The former New York mayor had anticipated taking Florida, helped by the large number of ex-residents from that city who retired to the state, and then going on to win New York, New Jersey and California on Super Tuesday, February 5.

But by the time his rivals arrived in Florida a fortnight ago from a highly competitive contest in South Carolina, they had built up too much momentum and gained lots of media exposure denied to Giuliani sitting waiting for them in Florida.

The outcome appeared inevitable on Monday when rallies he organised round Florida brought in crowds of only about 100 or fewer.

Mike Huckabee, the Baptist pastor and surprise winner of Iowa, also did poorly. He could not compete in terms of the money needed for ads in such a huge state and was not even in Florida to hear the results, instead watching them on television in St Louis, Missouri, one of the Super Tuesday states.

Romney and McCain had been battling it out for the last few days, travelling round the huge state by plane, stopping for short campaign rallies.

McCain won New Hampshire on January 8 and South Carolina on January 19, each hotly contested and part of the traditional track to the Republican nomination. Romney took Wyoming, Michigan and Nevada, none of them regarded as serious contests by most Republicans.

McCain, a US war hero who spent more than five years in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp, is the most moderate of the Republicans in the field and, as such, is viewed by Democrats as the most dangerous of the Republicans.

In the Democratic primary, a largely meaningless contest because the candidates did not campaign there, exit polls predicted Hillary Clinton would take 48%, Barack Obama 29% and John Edwards 14%.

Clinton began last Friday to insist that the primary does in fact matter. The Democratic national committee last year stripped Florida of its delegates - who would vote in the party's summer convention for the Democratic presidential nominee - because it held its primary before February 5.

Clinton wants the delegates reinstated while Obama is opposed.