South Carolina has usually gone Republican in the national elections. Pundits have been, to some degree, writing off its importance on the Democratic race. However, consider these numbers:
Total Republican Primary ballots cast in SC : 442,918
Total Democratic Primary ballots cast in SC : 530,322
That's a surplus of 87,404 on the side of the democrats. Now, it's a bit of a leap to say that this would automatically transfer into similar turnout for the national election (there were some significant voting machine troubles a week ago during the Republican primary). But it's also not a stretch by any means to think that since Barack dominated the unexpectedly high turnout (his margin in the primary was 2x or 3x what the polls predicted), that an Obama candidacy could turn the state of SC from red to blue. Wow.
If you haven't looked at these exit poll results, here's a summary of a few of the most interesting things.
It wasn't about gender : among women, it was Obama 54%, Clinton 30$, Edwards 16%.
Age was interesting : Obama dominated among young adults, led among the rest of the age brackets except for 65+, which was the only age range that broke for Clinton.
Blacks overwhelmingly went for Barack, which we expected; the record numbers of voters was obviously a surprise to the pollsters (the most notoriously hard thing about polling is judging who is likely to vote, and has been the thing that they've gotten wrong over and over again this season).
Young non-blacks broke overwhelmingly for Obama. Edwards - the third place, dark horse candidate - Edwards beat (or tied) Clinton in every non-black age bracket over 30. I think this is a combination of Edwards' hometown advantage, possible racism on the part of some white voters, and a sign of whites being offended by the divisive tactics of the Clintons in the last week or so.
All in all, an incredible victory for Obama, let's keep the momentum rolling through Super Tuesday!
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