Obama Doubles Clinton’s South Carolina Votes

The Democrats held their South Carolina primary on Saturday. Senator Barrack Obama of Illinois had led Senator Hillary Clinton of New York by about 8% in the polls about 38% to 30%, with former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina trailing at around 20%. When the ballots were counted, Senator Obama more than doubled Mrs. Clinton’s score, winning 55% to her 27% and Mr. Edwards' 18%.

The size of the Obama campaign’s win surprised just about everyone. While a majority of voters in the Democratic primary were black, there was the worry that the Bradley Effect would diminish his victory margin. The Bradley Effect is named after Tom Bradley, former mayor of Los Angeles, and it describes the white vote that appears in polling data for a black candidate, but which vanishes in the voting booth.

In the end, Senator Obama won about 80% of the black vote, and he pulled in a quarter of the white vote. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards divided the white vote rather evenly, and those blacks who didn’t vote for Senator Obama went largely to Mrs. Clinton. And 530,000 people voted, about double the 280,000 who voted in the South Carolina primary in 2004.

The most important point the primary made, in addition to handing out a few delegates, was put clearly in Mr. Obama’s victory speech. “Tonight the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was an illusion were told a different story.” His Iowa victory wasn’t a fluke.

The delegate count (excluding “super-delegates,” party apparatchiks who aren’t selected by voters) has Senator Obama in the lead with 63 delegates. Mrs. Clinton has 48. Mr. Edwards has 26. It will take 2,025 to win the nomination, so there is a very long way to go yet.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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