With the polls closed and the numbers rolling in, Barack Obama looks to have scored a decisive victory over Hillary Clinton in the Palmetto State:
Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) scored an overwhelming victory today over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary with massive support from black voters.
Clinton finished second and former senator John Edwards of North Carolina finished third in a contest that sets up a full-scale clash between Clinton and Obama on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. The vote climaxed several weeks of sometimes bitter personal clashes between Obama and Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that seemingly contributed to the electorate polarizing along racial lines.
Obama, the first black candidate regarded as a legitimate contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, won African American voters by a four-to-one margin – numbers that nearly replicated his performance among blacks in Iowa and Nevada. Unlike in those two states, however, where blacks made up 4 percent and 15 percent of those voting, African American voters were more than 50 percent of the electorate in South Carolina tonight.
Among white voters, the candidates ran far closer, with Clinton and Edwards, a native of South Carolina, running neck and neck while Obama lagged slightly behind. But among black voters, Clinton’s showing was modest and Edwards’s was negligible.
And tomorrow, the stealth campaign from the Clinton machine to downplay this victory will begin.
The line will be that Obama only won because of the African-American vote. Count on it.
Did Obama win because of the African American vote in South Carolina? Exactly. Are you taking issue with the facts?
I’m not taking issue with the facts, I’m merely predicting that the Clinton’s will downplay Obama’s victory claiming that it only happened because black people voted for him, when the exit polls tell quite another story.