Obama Scores a Thundering Victory in South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Barack Obama scored a thundering victory in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary Saturday, gaining important momentum for a coast-to-coast contest involving 22 states that's just nine days away.

Winning overwhelming support from African Americans and a quarter of the votes cast by white South Carolinians, the Illinois senator routed Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York in the Democratic Party's first presidential contest in the South.

Nearly complete results showed Obama winning 55 percent of the vote, doubling the 27 percent for Clinton. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who won the primary in his native state four years ago, managed just 18 percent this time, but said he would stay in the race.

The turnout approached 500,000, eclipsing the previous record of 290,000 in 2004, a sign that the party's voters remain energized in this election year.

In his victory speech to supporters at the downtown convention center, Obama, seeking to become America's first African-American president, said the results in South Carolina should silence cynics because of "the diverse coalition" of voters he has built in the contests so far.

"They are young and old, rich and poor; they are black and white, Latino and Asian; they are Democrats from Des Moines and independents from Concord, Republicans from rural Nevada and young people across this country who've never had a reason to participate until now," he said.

Alluding to the political brawl with Clinton during the past week, Obama warned his supporters "about what we're up against" in the days ahead — "undue influence of lobbyists," "conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House" and "the idea that it's acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election."

Shortly before Obama's victory celebration, The New York Times posted on its Web site a op-ed from Sunday's newspaper in which Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the daughter of the late John F. Kennedy, a Democratic Party icon, endorsed Obama under the headline: "A President Like My Father."

Although Clinton led in opinion polls in South Carolina just two months ago, exit polls showed that 55 percent of those who voted Saturday said Obama was the candidate most likely to unite the country, and 53 percent said he was the candidate most likely to bring about political change in America.

Clinton held onto second place despite an all-out effort by Edwards to overtake her and jump-start his campaign in his native South Carolina.

The voting in South Carolina capped a week in which the two Democratic front-runners leveled their most personal attacks yet at each other and brought the issue of race to the forefront of the campaign.

South Carolina's presidential primary also marked the end of the first phase of the Democratic contest for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, with Obama and Clinton having split the first four contests — Obama winning here and in Iowa, and Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada.

The next phase will be Feb. 5, when 22 states will hold caucuses or primaries, with more than 1,600 of the 2,025 delegates needed to win the party's nomination at the national convention in Denver this summer.

Clinton began focusing on the Feb. 5 states even before the voting here, and her statement congratulating Obama for his South Carolina underscored the importance her campaign is placing on the next round of voting.

"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 5th," it said.

Florida's primary is Tuesday, but the Democratic National Committee has stripped the state of its convention delegates because the primary date violates party rules.

Edwards, despite a third consecutive contest in which he trailed both Obama and Clinton, vowed to continue his pursuit of the nomination. "Now the three of us move on to Feb. 5," he told supporters in Columbia.

The Obama and Clinton camps appeared to be preparing for a drawn-out contest for delegates, depending on the outcome of the Feb. 5 voting.

South Carolina had 45 delegates at stake, and Obama won at least 11 and Clinton at least six, according to incomplete returns.

Exit polls conducted for news organizations Saturday found that 31 percent of the voters in South Carolina made up their minds how to vote in the days after a debate Monday notable for the finger-wagging between Obama and Clinton.

Although half of the voters blamed both Obama and Clinton for the negative tone of the political brawl, Obama benefited from the outrage felt by African Americans. He got 81 percent of the black vote, compared to 17 percent for Clinton.

Edwards won 39 percent of white voters and Clinton got 36 percent. But Obama managed to win nearly one in four white voters, much higher than predicted by earlier polls.

That will allow him to refute any suggestion that he is "the black candidate" for president, but still leaves him facing an uphill battle in large states with a much smaller proportion of black voters than South Carolina, where the Democratic primary electorate is divided evenly between blacks and whites.

According to the exit polls, the top issue on the minds of half of South Carolinians was the weakening economy, and more than half of those worried about the economy voted for Obama.

A quarter cited health care, and one in five cited the war in Iraq. Obama was the top vote-getter among those voters as well.

Clinton abandoned the state for two days during the week, allowing her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to act as a surrogate. At the time, polls showed Obama with a 20-point lead.

But the ex-president, despite his popularity among black voters, angered African Americans with what they perceived as deliberate attempts to distort Obama's record.

Consequently, the senator returned at the end of the week, in part, to showcase her backing from prominent African American women. But the ploy failed. Exit polls show Obama won 82 percent of African American women, to 17 percent for Clinton.

Clinton, in fact, even failed to win a majority of white women. She got just over 40 percent of the them, followed by Edwards with about a third and Obama with about 20 percent.

Nearly six in 10 said Bill Clinton's involvement in the campaign was an important factor in the way they voted Saturday, most of them siding with Obama.

In Independence, Mo., Saturday night, the former president congratulated Obama, saying, "He won fair and square."