Barack Obama Wins South Carolina Democratic Primary in a Landslide

Around 8:30pm, MSNBC and CNN declared Senator Barack Obama the winner for the South Carolina Democratic primary, winning in a landslide on the support of the African American vote.

The vote percentages were as follows:

Obama: 54%
Hillary 27%
Edwards 16%

The vote percentages are a little bit startling because although Barack Obama was supposed to win the South Carolina primary, he wasn't supposed to win the primary by such a large margin. Polls released in the days leading up to the South Carolina primary showed that Obama would win by less than 10 percentage points. That result was wrong once again as Obama surprisingly won the black vote by a large margin.

The result does not bode well for Hillary because it is an indicator that Hillary will continue doing well in the Southern Democratic primaries which have large populations of African American voters.

In the aftermath of the primary, Obama hailed victory as Hillary and Bill Clinton refused to focus on the defeat, stating that they were already planning their campaigns for the Super Tuesday states on February 5. On Super Tuesday, 22 states will be having their primary. The win in South Carolina gives Obama a slight momentum but not much. Clinton and Obama have taken turns winning primaries in these wide open Democratic race. The results from South Carolina have to be disappointing for John Edwards who was born in South Carolina and was the senator of the neighboring state of North Carolina. John Edwards' campaign insists that he is in the race for the long haul but this defeat might just drop him out of the race.

The win for Obama has been also attributed to Hillary and Bill Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama in the weeks leading up to the South Carolina primary. Obama had a good showing in the South Carolina debate which was seen by 5 million viewers on MSNBC and was hosted by the Black Caucus.