Barack's Blowout

Most observers expected Obama to win the South Carolina primary. But 55 to 27? Extraordinary:

Sen. Barack Obama, vying to become the nation's first black president, has won the South Carolina primary today, boosted by a record turnout of African-American voters.

Obama overwhelmingly beat Sen. Hillary Clinton with 55 percent support to her 27 percent, and former Sen. John Edwards, trailing with 18 percent support, with almost all precincts reporting.

Not surprisingly, Obama overwhelmingly won the African-American vote. White voters were more evenly divided, and the Clintons are spinning this as only the Clintons can:

Obama won the support of 78 percent of black voters, compared with 19 percent for Hillary Clinton and just two percent for John Edwards. Whites, meanwhile, divided more closely among the three candidates, though Obama notably failed to attract more than a quarter of their votes, reports Langer. Clinton and Edwards were even among whites, with Clinton winning white women, Edwards, white men.

[...]

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88," former President Bill Clinton told reporters outside a polling station in Columbia Saturday. "Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

Zing! Obama is no Jackson, thank God, but Clinton needs him to be one.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at January 27, 2008 09:02 AM