Sunday, January 27, 2008

Obama Routs Clinton In South Carolina


The South Carolina primary is over and Barack Obama scored a smashing victory. With 99% of the votes counted, Obama has 55% of that vote. He won in every age group except the over-65 group, and it looks like he appealed to voters in all racial groups. Clinton finished with 27% and Edwards had 18%.

I think Clinton probably expected to finish second in South Carolina, but I don't think she expected Obama to double the number of votes she received. There's no other way to put it -- this was an old-fashioned "butt-kicking". It's also the first time any of the candidates has gotten more than 50% of the votes in the multi-candidate field.

Edwards finished third, but at least he wasn't embarrassed and shut out like in Nevada. His 18% is probably enough to let him continue his campaign, and he did grab some of South Carolina's delegates.

At least prior to last night, the mainstream media would have us believe that Obama was struggling to stay up with supposed front-runner Clinton. But that's not how things are playing out in the primaries (at least so far). Obama has done better than expected in every one, except maybe New Hampshire, and even there he wound up with the most delegates.

In the four states where delegates have been awarded by vote or caucus, Obama has the lead. Obama has won 63 delegates, Clinton has won 47 delegates, and Edwards has won 23 delegates.

The delegate count is really the only thing that matters, and so far, 439 delegates have been decided, including superdelegates. It is only after you add the superdelegates that you see a lead for Clinton. In overall delegates so far, Clinton has 230, Obama has 152 and Edwards has 61. The superdelegates will lose a lot of the clout they currently show in a few days -- on Super Tuesday.

Clinton expects to regain her momentum on February 5th -- and she might. But I suspect that Obama may well out-perform mainstream media expectations again. I'm also not yet ready to count Edwards out.

It should be interesting, and there's even still a chance that the Texas and Ohio vote in March might actually mean something. That prospect is kind of exciting.

But once again, the biggest winner of the night was the Democratic Party. In 2004, around 200,000 people voted in the South Carolina Democratic primary. Last night, over 500,000 voted in that primary. In every state so far, people have been flocking in huge numbers to support Democratic candidates. If this trend continues, it could mean a very nice November for Democrats.

2 comments:

  1. He won in every age group except the over-65 group...

    These would be people who were born in 1943 or earlier, which means they were already adults when the civil rights movement was in full force.

    There's a theory of human development called "You are what you were when" which claims that at about age 14, American youth set their own "values." Everyone over 65 who grew up in the Deep South would have been 14 years old during the height of Jim Crow.

    The fact that any whites from this age group would have voted for Obama is pretty remarkable and speaks volumes about how far the New South has come.

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  2. Actually, it's not really all that remarkable that he would get some votes from this group. Believe it or not, there have always been a small percentage of whites in the South that believed in racial justice. But that percentage has become much larger in younger generations.

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