Here's a video of Mitt Romney's press conference earlier today alongside John McCain, endorsing McCain for president after the often bitter campaign the two fought through up until last week:

Mitt Romney is officially joining in the Republican effort to unite behind John McCain. CNN reports that Romney will endorse McCain today at an event scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET in Boston, and will ask his delegates to vote for McCain.

When he dropped out last week, Romney said that a continued primary fight would delay the launch of a national effort against the Democrats. After a brief period of mourning for his campaign, endorsing McCain was the next logical step, and definitely a necessary one if he wants to remain in the good graces of the Republican establishment.

Here are some highlights from Mitt Romney's speech today at CPAC, in which he quit the presidential race after a very bad Super Tuesday result:

• "As of today, more than 4 million people have given me their vote for President, less than Senator McCain's 4.7 million, but quite a statement nonetheless. Eleven states have given me their nod, compared to his 13. Of course, because size does matter, he's doing quite a bit better with his number of delegates."

• "I have been struck by the enormous differences in the wealth and well-being of people of different nations. I have read a number of scholarly explanations for the disparities. I found the most convincing was that written by David Landes, a professor emeritus from Harvard University. I presume he's a liberal – I guess that's redundant."

• "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

The full prepared text is available after the jump.

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Romney is speaking before CPAC right now, explaining why he's suspending his campaign, and according to advance excerpts given to the Associated Press, Romney will say:

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

Guess Mitt's determined to exit this thing with his now-cosmic levels of ignominy completely undiminished....

CNN is reporting that three sources tell the network that Romney is hanging up his Mittens. He's suspending his campaign.

CNN also reports that Mitt had tentatively decided to quit last night but made the final decision this morning. Romney is about to address the CPAC conference, where he'll make it official.

Just think, all that money and technology spent on building the perfect GOP Robo-candidate -- all for naught.

Today's a big day for John McCain — he's giving his speech to the CPAC conference, where he will do his best to assuage the doubts of the many conservative activists in attendance. During the speech, expect him to stress how he got involved in politics as a "foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution," and to attack the right-wing bona-fides of a certain former Massachusetts governor who used to not be so conservative.

In that spirit, here's McCain's new ad running in the Potomac Primary area, attacking Mitt Romney for his past political life as an anti-Reagan liberal:

"If we can't trust trust Mitt Romney on Ronald Reagan," the announcer asks, "how can we trust him to lead America?"

McCain is also running some of his other standard ads, such as the "True Conservative" spot, which name-drops Reagan profusely.

Today's Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, their final national polls before Super Tuesday, show Hillary Clinton and John McCain with the leads going into this crucial day — a sign that both of them are the overall favorites for tonight.

Here are the Dem numbers, compared to yesterday's:

Gallup: Clinton 47% (+0), Obama 42% (-1)

Rasmussen: Clinton 47% (+1), Obama 40% (+0)

On the Republican side, John McCain's support may have dipped a bit in Gallup, but he's still doing more than fine:

Gallup: McCain 41% (-4), Romney 24% (-1), Huckabee 21% (+4)

Rasmussen: McCain 34% (+1), Romney 30% (+0), Huckabee 20% (-2)

This morning's Zogby polls show John McCain on track for some big victories tomorrow, with California being the only real trouble spot:

California:
Romney 40% (+3)
McCain 32% (-2)
Huckabee 12%

Missouri:
McCain 35% (-1)
Huckabee 27%(+0)
Romney 24% (+2)

New Jersey:
McCain 52% (-2)
Romney 26% (+3)
Huckabee 7% (+0)

New York:
McCain 53% (+4)
Romney 19% (-4)
Huckabee 8% (+0)

A new Zogby poll in California — a state that may well decide the direction of the Democratic race — shows Barack Obama taking a small lead over Hillary Clinton, within the margin of error. Obama has 45% to Clinton's 41%, with Obama's 20-point lead among men making up for Hillary's 11-point lead with women.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney has taken an apparent edge himself of 37% to John McCain's 34%, followed by Mike Huckabee with 12%. Although McCain has the support of the state Republican establishment, led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Romney leads among those who say immigration and the war on terror are their top issues — probably owing to McCain's support for immigration reform and his opposition to torture.

Some more Zogby state poll numbers are available after the jump.

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The new ABC/Washington Post national poll shows a tight race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Here are the numbers, compared to the previous poll from three weeks ago:

Clinton 47% (+5)
Obama 43% (+6)

John Edwards was at 11% in the last poll, an indication that his support may be breaking fairly even between two remaining candidates in the country as a whole — though the breakdowns have also seemed to vary from state to state in other polls.

On the Republican side, it's a different story. John McCain is way ahead, and appears to have picked up virtually all of Rudy Giuliani's past support:

McCain 48% (+20)
Romney 24% (+5)
Huckabee 20% (-4)
Paul 7% (+4)

Mitt Romney can now claim to have won the final Republican contest before Super Tuesday: The Maine caucuses, which are being held town by town throughout this weekend. With 68% of the towns reporting, the Associated Press has projected Romney the winner with 52% of the state delegates to John McCain's 21%, followed by Ron Paul at 19% and Mike Huckabee with 6%.

That said, Romney probably won't get much of a bump here. After all, Maine is a small and out of the way state — and his victory in Wyoming didn't help him any in New Hampshire three days later.

Yesterday we brought you a roundup of Super Tuesday polls for the Democratic primaries. Today, we bring you the same for the Republicans.

The bottom line: John McCain has it made.

He leads in nearly every state, with Romney only having clear advantages in Massachusetts, Colorado and of course Utah. Huckabee runs well in some Southern states, but even then he'll probably lose a bunch to McCain. Compounding the trend for McCain, Rudy's former support will probably go almost entirely to him.

A complication: Republican primaries don't use uniform rules of delegate apportionment, like the Democrats do. Quite a few contests are winner-take-all, but many others are not. They do not use a proportional system, but instead distribute delegates by district (usually the same as House districts) and then accord all the district's delegates to the plurality winner.

What does that mean for the race? The Northeast — where McCain is strongest — is mostly winner-take-all. And where Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee do manage some strength, it's often in states that distribute delegates either by district or even proportionally, meaning that the map alone gives McCain a big advantage.

In short, expect McCain to rack up a lot of delegates on Tuesday. He won't clinch the nomination outright, but he may build up an advantage so large that his nomination becomes a foregone conclusion.

Check out our poll chart and further analysis after the jump.

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Mitt Romney fourth-quarter fundraising numbers are in, and it's not a pretty picture. The official total raised is a seemingly-impressive $27 million — but $18 million of it came from Mitt himself. Romney ended the year with $9 million cash on hand, meaning that he would have been broke if not for his own contribution.

For this whole cycle, Romney has raised a total of about $53 million from other people, and kicked in $35 million himself. An interesting trend in his campaign has been that as the campaign has gone on longer, the proportion of money raised from others has gone steadily down, while Mitt has come to rely more and more on Tagg's inheritance.

With five days to go until Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney's spokesperson is confirming that the Romney campaign has bought exactly zero TV ad time in any of the states that vote on Feb. 5.

"We currently haven't purchased any ad time yet," Romney spokesperson Kevin Madden confirmed to Election Central, when asked about Feb. 5th states.

The Associated Press, relying on anonymous officials, reported the lack of any ad buying on the Romney campaign's part. The Politico also confirmed this late yesterday evening.

Even more interesting, Madden also refused to say whether the campaign would be buying any ad time in any Feb. 5th state. Asked if Romney would buy any time, Madden said: "We don't telegraph strategic decisions like ad buying ahead of time."

This suggests the possibility that the campaign won't be buying any time in advance of the multi-state showdown that is likely to decide the race. At the least, this is a big boost for John McCain. At the most, it could amount to a possible admission that the Romney camp thinks the race is pretty much over.

Late Update: A Romney campaign official tells me that the campaign will be purchasing ad time today, though the official declined to specify how much and where.

Late Late Update: The Romney buy is in California, the crucial big state where McCain picked up the endorsement of Arnold Schwarzenegger today.

A new poll from Public Policy Polling (D) shows that Barack Obama might be sneaking up on Hillary Clinton in her home state of New York. Hillary leads with 45% of the vote, followed by Obama at 33% and John Edwards with 10%. In the demographic breakdown, Hillary leads 44%-29% among whites, Obama 44%-32% among African-Americans, and Hillary 64%-31% among Hispanics.

Bear in mind that all Democratic primaries use a form of proportional representation — so Obama could walk away with a decent chunk of delegates if he simply posts a respectable showing for an out-of-state challenger.

On the Republican side, it looks like John McCain will coast to a win in this winner-take-all contest. He leads with 34%, followed by the now-departed Rudy Giuliani at 20%, Mitt Romney with 19%, and Mike Huckabee with 10%.

John McCain appears to have just barely edged out Mitt Romney in the all-important Florida GOP primary, according to projections from CNN and the Associated Press.

Right now, with just over half reporting, McCain has 36%, Romney has 31% and Rudy is bringing up third with 15%.

The scuttlebutt in GOP circles is that the McCain and Romney camps are both aggressively lobbying Rudy for his endorsement, in the expectation that Rudy will drop out soon, perhaps even tonight.

More soon.

Late Update: Rudy is speaking now. It sounds very much like a drop-out speech. Rudy is telling America what it needs to do in order to not succumb to the terrorists without him at the helm.

Late Update: Tomorrow the GOP is set to debate in California. Will Rudy show? ABC News reports that the Rudy and McCain camps are negotiating over ways to give Rudy a graceful exit.

Late Update: Romney just gave his concession speech. His message, in a nutshell: Unions and Hillary are bad, and we should thank George W. Bush for keeping us safe for the past six years.

Late Update: One thing worth noting: This is the first GOP primary that wasn't open to independents, and McCain won it. If you look at the exit polls, you can see that McCain won the broad middle of GOPers, winning over Romney among somewhat liberal, moderate, and somewhat conservative Repubicans, and only losing to Romney among very conservative voters.

Late Update: It's done -- Rudy will drop out and endorse McCain.

A Democratic source who tracks media buys tells me something interesting that reflects how bad the environment is for Repubs this year: He says that no GOP candidate has a single ad up on the air in any of the Feb. 5th states, even though Super Tuesday is a week away.

He also provides a good explanation for the Mittmentum we've been seeing. According to the source, Mitt spent roughly $1.5 million on TV ads during the week ending January 25, while both John McCain and Rudy spent roughly $800,000 apiece.

This suggests that Romney might be succeeding partly because he's doubled the ad spending of McCain.

Anyway, I've got calls into the campaigns to confirm this. We'll keep you posted.

The final Zogby poll of the Florida primary gives John McCain an apparent lead in the Republican race, though like practically all other polls the race is still too close to call. Here are the numbers, compared to yesterday's release:

McCain 35% (+2)
Romney 31% (+1)
Giuliani 13% (-1)
Huckabee 13% (+2)
Paul 2% (+0)

The final SurveyUSA poll in the Florida primary shows that the Republican race is simply too close to call between John McCain and Mitt Romney. Here are the numbers, compared to the poll released earlier today:

McCain 32% (+1)
Romney 31% (-1)
Giuliani 15% (-1)
Huckabee 13% (+0)
Paul 6% (+1)

Analysis from SurveyUSA: "We can reveal that in the final totals it is McCain 31.6%, Romney 31.2%, but we will caution that those numbers are not materially different than the Romney 31.9%, McCain 31.3% numbers that SurveyUSA reported this morning. The movement is too small to be judged significant, and the best interpretation of the data and the trendlines is that the contest could go either way."

A new survey from Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling gives Mitt Romney a big lead over John McCain, and clear momentum. Here are the numbers, compared to their last poll from five days ago:

Romney 35% (+7)
McCain 28% (+3)
Huckabee 13% (-2)
Giuliani 12% (-7)
Paul 5% (+0)

The new SurveyUSA poll in Florida shows a dead heat in the Republican primary. In a possible sign of momentum, Mitt Romney leads by one point, whereas he was down in their previous poll released Friday:

Romney 32% (+4)
McCain 31% (+1)
Giuliani 16% (-2)
Huckabee 13% (-1)
Paul 5% (-1)

The poll was conducted entirely yesterday, after Gov. Charlie Crist endorsed McCain.

The ad wars in Florida sure have gotten rough. John McCain has a new radio ad ridiculing Romney's technocrat image, bringing up some "numbers" that Mitt might not like:

• Romney's health plan in Massachusetts has gone $400 million over budget.

• Romney raised taxes in Massachusetts by $700 million.

• Romney loses to Hillary Clinton by 16 points in a national poll.

"Republicans lose," the announcer says. "We can't afford Mitt Romney."

Late Update: A response from Romney spokesman Kevin Madden, via-email, is available after the jump.

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This morning's Quinnipiac poll shows the Republican primary in Florida to be a statistical dead heat. Here are the numbers, compared to the last poll from two weeks ago:

McCain 32% (+10)
Romney 31% (+12)
Giuliani 14% (-6)
Huckabee 13% (-6)
Paul 3% (-2)