Mr Huckabee failed to capitalise on that upset, however, in part because he had not had the money to build a campaignmachine in the states that voted next.
It is working seamlessly with Mr Obama's own campaignmachine, Organising for America, while it is an open secret that the various Republican campaigns are a badly co-ordinated mess.
He has worked to bridge divisions within the opposition, which includes the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, his own People's Justice Party and the Democratic Action Party, which mostly appeals to ethnic Chinese voters, and to turn the loose alliance into an effective campaignmachine.