South Carolina Results

Barack Obama has won the South Carolina Democratic primary with 55% of the vote (giving him 25 delegates) versus 27% for Hillary Clinton (12 delegates). John Edwards got the remaining 18% (8 delegates).

The exit polls reveal some interesting results. The most comprehensive numbers I've found online are at the MSNBC site.

The most dramatic demographic differences between the candidates are aligned, not surprisingly, along racial lines. Obama won 78% of the Black vote. Even just a couple of months ago, as you'll recall, he trailed Clinton in the polls among South Carolina Blacks and there was talk that he was viewed by them as an "American of African descent" but not an "African-American." Obviously, they've now fully embraced him.

Among Whites, however, Obama scored only 24%, in third place behind both Clinton and Edwards. The only exception to this was with young voters. He actually came in first with 52% among under-30 Whites. That age group, however, only comprised 11% of White voters.

After Iowa and New Hampshire, it became clear that Northern Whites will enthusiastically support Obama and vote for him in large numbers. Do the South Carolina results prove the conventional wisdom that Southern Whites will refuse to vote for any Black candidate?

Maybe that's the wrong question to ask. A more important question is whether the turnout of Southern White opposition in the general election would be larger against Obama than Clinton. Would bigots who can't stand the thought of a Black president be less upset at the prospect of a woman running the country?

The enthusiasm of such opposition would also depend, of course, on who the Republican nominee was. It's easy to imagine that McCain, Romney, or Giuliani might "inspire" rednecks to just stay home on election day. Huckabee, on the other hand, could conceivably mobilize the fundamentalist masses into a voting frenzy. But at the moment, it looks like Huckabee's star is waning.

Also remember that it's entirely possible to win the general election without winning a single Southern state. John Kerry lost every state in the South in 2004. But if he had won Ohio he would now be president.

One other bit of data in the South Carolina exit polls jumps out at me. The winner among White voters was John Edwards, with 40%. But among Blacks, he got an astonishingly tiny 2% of the votes. Is there something about Edwards that Black voters strongly dislike?