Race Still Unpredictable after Day of Balloting

LAS VEGAS — The 2008 presidential campaign moved to the West and the South on Saturday with the same unpredictability it has shown since it began in Iowa two and a half weeks ago.

It was the busiest day of voting yet in the 2008 campaign and, perhaps fittingly, it produced a different winner in every contest. And the Democratic contest was its most rancorous to date, with both sides exchanging charges of political dirty tricks and voter suppression.

Arizona Sen. John McCain won the bellwether South Carolina GOP primary, edging out former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, but former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the Republican caucus in Nevada.

And while New York Sen. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the Democratic caucus in Nevada, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama claimed that under complicated party rules he won 13 national convention delegates to Clinton's 12, a claim the Clinton camp disputed. Some news organizations agreed with Obama's estimates, others had the two candidates tied with 14 delegates each.

But Clinton's popular vote victory marked the first time in the 2008 presidential campaign that any candidate in either party received a majority of the vote in any contested event.

Romney got 51 percent of the vote in the Republican caucus in Nevada, but he was the only major candidate to compete for the state's 34 GOP convention delegates. And he largely abandoned South Carolina for Nevada, resulting in a 15 percent fourth-place showing in the Palmetto State.

The results in South Carolina and Nevada followed the trend of earlier contests: there was little or no evidence of a major "bounce" from previous wins, all but guaranteeing that the seesawing nomination battles in both parties will continue for weeks to come with no clear favorites, though probably with a narrowed field.

"This is one step on a long journey," Clinton told cheering supporters in Las Vegas, likely reflecting the dynamics of both races.

In the Republican contest, McCain could come closest to laying claim to the title of front-runner by virtue of his victory Saturday: Since 1980, every Republican nominee has also won the party primary in the Palmetto State.

In fact, the South Carolina results suggest the GOP contest could narrow the choice for Republicans to McCain and Romney, unless former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who got only 2 percent in South Carolina, can mount a surge in Florida on Jan. 29.

"We're waiting for you," said Giuliani, sending notice to his rivals that he's lying in wait in Florida.

A survey of voters as they left polling stations in South Carolina found that Republicans were evenly divided between McCain and Huckabee. But McCain also won the backing of people who described themselves as moderates and independents, groups that have long been drawn to McCain.

If Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, can't win in South Carolina, where evangelical Christians are nearly half of all GOP primary voters, the question becomes where he can win in the weeks ahead.

Exit polls showed Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucus on the strength of evangelical support, won 40 percent of the evangelical vote in South Carolina. But McCain got a respectable 27 percent of the vote. And among non-evangelicals, McCain was the choice of 40 percent, Huckabee the choice of only 12 percent.

Similarly, in the Democratic contest, the poor showing by former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in Saturday's Nevada caucus — he got just 4 percent of the vote — leaves Democrats with a choice between Clinton and Obama.

It could be a bitter choice for some Democrats, especially given the way their voting is breaking along ethnic lines: blacks and younger voters for Obama, Hispanics and women for Clinton.

No matter the state, the economy was cited by voters as their top concern. Republicans in Nevada and South Carolina also listed illegal immigration as a major concern. And Democratic caucus goers in Nevada cited health care and the war in Iraq as their major concerns.

The results in Nevada's Democratic presidential caucus left both bruised and bitter enough to forgo such niceties as shaking hands and exchanging congratulations, signaling an even tougher fight in South Carolina next weekend and, more importantly, the Feb. 5 round of voting in 22 states.

The Democratic vote in Nevada broke strongly along ethnic lines, indicating potential problems ahead for both Clinton and Obama.

Clinton, who has angered African Americans with comments viewed as critical of Martin Luther King Jr., lost black Nevada caucus goers to Obama, 79-16 percent. And that suggests problems for the former first lady next Saturday in South Carolina, where nearly half of the Democratic primary voters are black.

But Obama lost Hispanic Nevada caucus goers to Clinton, 64-23 percent, underscoring some of the difficulties he could encounter on Feb. 5 when 22 states with more than half the nation's Hispanic population hold primaries or caucuses.

To get back into the win column after South Carolina, Obama will also have to find a way to take back white and female voters, which he won in Iowa, the first contest of the 2008 presidential campaign. In Nevada, Clinton won whites, 52-34 percent, and women, 52-35 percent.