US Senator Barack Obama routed his colleague, Hillary Clinton, in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary on Saturday, riding massive African-American support to a critical win in his bid to become the first black US president.
The vote marked a second key victory for Obama and evened the score with Clinton, who has also won two key state primaries ahead of a blitz of nearly two dozen nationwide contests on February 5.
The charismatic Illinois senator, who beat the former first lady 55.4 to 26.5 percent, lashed out at Clinton in his victory speech, painting himself as an agent of change and her as a divisive voice of the status quo.
"There are real differences between the candidates. We are looking for more than just a change of party in the White House. We are looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington," Obama said as supporters chanted "We want change," and "Yes, we can!"
"It's a status quo that extends beyond a particular party, and that status quo is fighting back with everything its got, with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face."
Even though his win came largely from black voters, 81 percent of whom picked Obama while 17 percent chose Clinton, Obama sought to downplay the racial divide.
"It is not about black versus white. This election is about the past versus the future," he said.
Clinton had grabbed the momentum with successive victories in New Hampshire and Nevada. The New York senator acknowledged her defeat in South Carolina and vowed to take her fight to become the first woman US president nationwide.
"I have called Senator Obama to congratulate him and wish him well," said a statement issued by the former first lady's campaign.
"We now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who will make their voices heard in Florida and the 22 states as well as American Samoa who will vote on February 5."
The state primaries serve to nominate a sole candidate in both the Democratic and Republican parties in the campaign to replace President George W. Bush, whose White House term ends in 2009.
Former senator John Edwards came in a disappointing third with 18 percent of the vote in his native state, but promised he would stay in the race.
"If you are one of the millions of Americans who have yet to cast your vote in this Democratic process, beginning on February 5th and moving beyond, your voice will be heard and we will be there with you every single step of the way," he said.
Exit polls showed the vote was divided along racial and gender lines, in a state where African-Americans make up half the Democratic electorate.
Obama won 24 percent of the white vote, according to network exit poll results. Edwards won 39 percent of the white vote, while Clinton took 36 percent.
Fifty-three percent of South Carolina's Democrats put a premium on a candidate's ability to bring about change, a central theme in Obama's campaign.
Only 15 percent put a premium on experience, the cornerstone of Clinton's pitch, and six percent said they wanted someone who could get elected in November.
Local officials said early indications were that turnout was heavy, the latest sign of soaring enthusiasm for the 2008 field among Democratic voters. An ABC exit poll said more than half of the voters were black.
Obama picked up a high-profile endorsement from Caroline Kennedy, the last living child of the late former president John F. Kennedy, whose young age and platform of change have drawn comparisons to Obama.
"We need a change in the leadership of this country -- just as we did in 1960," she wrote in a New York Times editorial titled: "A President Like My Father."
A bruising week of campaigning in South Carolina featured both camps accusing the other of playing racial politics, and sparked a debate about former president Bill Clinton's fiery interventions on behalf of his wife.
Analysts said however that Obama may not get too much of a momentum "bounce" heading into February 5.
"For Obama, a win in South Carolina is the equivalent of holding serve," said University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala.
Polls showed Clinton with sizeable leads in delegate-rich states such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Together these states account for 970 delegates, nearly half the total at stake on February 5 and a quarter of the total to be seated at the party's August nominating convention in Denver.
But Democratic Party rules provide for proportional allocation of delegates in each state so it is conceivable that Clinton and Obama could be locked in a tight delegate fight that could spill over into the convention, where 2,025 delegates are needed for the nomination.
Obama wins key South Carolina vote
Obama routs Clinton in South Carolina
Barack Obama routed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially charged South Carolina primary Saturday night, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National Convention delegates.
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"The choice in this election is not about regions or religions or genders," Obama said at a boisterous victory rally. "It's not about rich versus poor, young versus old and it's not about black versus white. It's about the past versus the future."
The audience chanted "Race doesn't matter" as it awaited Obama to make his appearance after rolling up 55 percent of the vote in a three-way race.
But it did, in a primary that shattered turnout records.
About half the voters were black, according to polling place interviews, and four out of five of them supported Obama. Black women turned out in particularly large numbers. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, got about a quarter of the white vote while Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina split the rest.
Clinton flew to Nashville as the polls closed, and looked ahead. "Now the eyes of the country turn to Tennessee and the other states voting on Feb. 5," she said, adding "millions and millions of Americans are going to have their voices heard."
Edwards finished a distant third, a sharp setback in the state where he was born and scored a primary victory in his first presidential campaign four years ago. Even so, he vowed to remain in the race, his goal, he said, to "give voice to all those whose voices aren't being heard."
The victory was Obama's first since he won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, scored an upset in the New Hampshire primary a few days later. They split the Nevada caucuses, she winning the turnout race, he gaining a one-delegate margin. In an historic race, she hopes to become the first woman to occupy the White House, and Obama is the strongest black contender in history.
The South Carolina primary marked the end of the first phase of the campaign for the Democratic nomination, a series of single-state contests that winnowed the field, conferred co-front-runner status on Clinton and Obama but had relatively few delegates at stake.
That all changes in 10 days' time, when New York, Illinois and California are among the 15 states holding primaries in a virtual nationwide primary. Another seven states and American Samoa will hold Democratic caucuses on the same day.
Obama took a thinly veiled swipe at Clinton in his remarks.
"We are up against conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor, and judgment, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose — a higher purpose," Obama said.
Looking ahead to Feb. 5, he added that "nearly half the nation will have the chance to join us in saying that we are tired of business-as-usual in Washington, we are hungry for change, and we are ready to believe again."
Nearly complete returns showed Obama winning 55 percent of the vote, Clinton gaining 27 percent. Edwards had 18 percent and won only his home county of Oconee.
Obama also gained 25 convention delegates, Clinton won 12 and Edwards eight.
Overall, Clinton has 249 delegates, followed by Obama with 167 and Edwards with 58.
Obama also gained an endorsement from Caroline Kennedy, who likened the Illinois senator to her late father, President John F. Kennedy.
"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," she wrote on The New York Times op-ed page. "But for the first time, I believe I have found a man who could be that president — and not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."
All three contenders campaigned in South Carolina on primary day, but only Obama and Edwards arranged to speak to supporters after the polls closed. Clinton left for Tennessee as the polls were closing. After playing a muted role in the earlier contests, the issue of race dominated an incendiary week that included a shift in strategy for Obama, a remarkably bitter debate and fresh scrutiny of former President Clinton's role in his wife's campaign.
Each side accused the other of playing the race card, sparking a controversy that frequently involved Bill Clinton.
"They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here," the former president said at one stop as he campaigned for his wife, strongly suggesting that blacks would not support a white alternative to Obama.
Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate," a tag that could hurt him outside the South.
Nearly six in 10 voters said the former president's efforts for his wife was important to their choice, and among them, slightly more favored Obama than the former first lady.
Overall, Obama defeated Clinton among both men and women.
The exit polls showed the economy was the most important issue in the race. About one quarter picked health care. And only one in five said it was the war in Iraq, underscoring the extent to which the once-dominant issue has faded in the face of financial concerns.
Obama, Clinton divide blacks
When Hillary Rodham Clinton started running for president, Wanjulia Ezekiel was thrilled.
'I was looking forward to the advancement of a female,' she said.
But Sen. Barack Obama is getting her vote in this week's Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina.
'He speaks to the possibility that I dreamed about as a child,' explained the 40-year- old civil engineer from Columbia, the state capital.
With Democrats on track to select either the party's first female or black presidential nominee, polls have suggested that black women such as Ezekiel are torn by conflicting loyalties to race and gender.
In interviews, some black voters have said that they were supporting the New York senator because they did not believe that Obama could get elected amid lingering racism in America.
But as the Democratic contest narrows to a two-person race, and Obama showed that he could win white votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, voters are swinging behind him in impressive numbers.
'I understand that many of you are still a little skeptical,' Obama, an Illinois senator, told a Martin Luther King Jr. banquet in Las Vegas last week. 'But not as skeptical as you were before Iowa. Sometimes it takes other folks before we believe ourselves.'
Election Day polling in recent Democratic contests has shown him with up to 80 percent of the black vote.
If Obama comes close to those margins in South Carolina, he'll likely win the Democrats' first Southern primary. Blacks are expected to cast half, or more, of the votes in Saturday's primary.
Obama returned to South Carolina last night, after preaching at Ebenezer Baptist, King's old church, in Atlanta earlier in the day. There, he alluded to a recent racially tinged debate with the Clinton camp 'that served to obscure the issues, instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation. None of our hands are clean.'
But he opened a more aggressive phase of his campaign yesterday while addressing a racially diverse crowd of about 2,500 a few blocks from the Statehouse in Columbia, accusing Hillary and Bill Clinton of intentionally distorting his words. His sharper language signaled Obama's intention to counter what is expected to be an all-out campaign this week by former President Clinton to rally black support for his wife's candidacy around the state.
Clinton, Obama and John Edwards are to meet in a debate at 8 p.m. today in Myrtle Beach, S.C., sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute.
In spite of Obama's clear advantage among black voters, some independent analysts say the primary is not out of reach for Clinton. She is working to hold down his margins among blacks, while hoping to peel white support away from Edwards, who said yesterday on CNN that he got his 'butt kicked' in Nevada, and is struggling to remain a factor.
Clinton supporter Don Fowler, a former national Democratic chairman who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina, said this state is an uphill struggle for Clinton.
'The support is not enthusiastic and jumping and surging like Obama's, but she's got a lot of support here,' he said.
One of Clinton's top black supporters, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, is campaigning in South Carolina this week. In an interview, she said she's telling black voters that 'we're making history both ways,' and that Clinton's experience and 'her passion and her heart' make her the better choice.
As Obama's candidacy has taken off, Clinton's support among black voters has plummeted. A national poll last week by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN showed her trailing Obama by a 2-to-1 margin among blacks nationally.
Female voters have been the key to Clinton's recent primary and caucus victories, and black women have been slower to gravitate to Obama than black men. But Obama's recent gains among black women have outpaced those among black men.
Last October, Obama was running 33 percentage points behind Clinton among black women. He now leads by 9 percentage points among that group.
Black men favor Obama by a much wider margin, better than 3-to-1, according to the national poll.
Jimmy Thompson, 53, a state government worker from West Columbia, said he had been leaning toward Clinton at one point but is now solidly for Obama.
'It's really about who he is and his values, and the change that he is talking about,' he said after early Sunday services at Brookland Baptist Church, one of the state's largest black congregations.
Some Clinton supporters say she needs as much as 40 percent of the black vote to win here, and her campaign has been pushing to halt further erosion among black women.
For more than two weeks, Clinton has aired commercials on black-oriented radio stations that feature an endorsement by Jacqueline Jackson, the wife of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.
McCain defeats Huckabee in tight race in S.C.
Economy, immigration top voters concerns in key GOP primary
COLUMBIA, S.C. - John McCain narrowly defeated Mike Huckabee in the Republican primary in South Carolina on Saturday.
With returns from 93 precincts counted, McCain won about 33 percent of the vote and Huckabee had about 30 percent. Fred Thompson was in third place with 16 percent, after saying he needed a strong showing to sustain his candidacy. Another Republican, California Rep. Duncan Hunter, dropped out even before the votes were tallied.
McCain won 19 of the state's GOP delegates, and Huckabee won 5.
McCain called his victory evidence that his campaign "can carry right through" Florida into the giant round of caucuses and primaries on Feb. 5. "I know it's not easy," he told The Associated Press, "and we've got a long way to go."
South Carolina was where McCain's presidential prospects died eight years ago, and he savored the victory this time. "It just took us awhile, that's all," he said in the interview. "Eight years is not a long time."
Asked if he was now the front-runner for the GOP nomination, McCain demurred.
"I don't know," he said, "we like to run from behind."
Huckabee told his supporters there was still a long way to go in the race for the presidential nomination.
“This is not an event, it is a process," Hucakbee said, "and the process is far, far from over.”
Interviews with South Carolina voters leaving their polling places indicated that McCain, an Arizona senator, and Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, divided the Republican vote somewhat evenlyh. As was his custom, McCain won the votes of self-described independents.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney cruised to victory earlier in the day in the little-contested Nevada caucuses.
No matter the state, the economy was the top issue. Republicans in Nevada and South Carolina cited immigration as their second most-important concern.
South Carolina's primary has gone to the party's eventual nominee every four years since 1980.
That made it a magnet for Thompson, who staked his candidacy on a strong showing, as well as for Romney, McCain and Huckabee.
McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, appealed to a large population of military veterans in South Carolina, and stressed his determination to rein in federal spending as he worked to avenge a bitter defeat in the 2000 primary.
