NBC: Edwards wins big in South Carolina
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina won the South Carolina primary by a wide margin Tuesday, NBC News projected, ensuring that the Democratic presidential campaign would not yet be a coronation of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Kerry, the front-runner for the nomination after he scored impressive victories in the first two important tests of the campaign, finished second and was expected to have a “very good day” overall as voters in South Carolina and six other states rendered judgments Tuesday, MSNBC pollster John Zogby said.
Some of his rivals were expected to be knocked out of the race, but Edwards, who had said he had to win in South Carolina, made sure he would live to fight another day. He easily beat Kerry in South Carolina, where he was born, NBC News projected shortly after the polls closed, based on a survey of voters as they left polling places.
The Rev. Al Sharpton finished third, by far his best showing of the campaign. But exit polls indicated that he would fall just short of the 15 percent threshold he would need to be apportioned delegates at the Democratic National Convention.
Sharpton was counting on heavy support from African-Americans, but NBC’s exit polling indicated that he was receiving only about 18 percent of the black vote, about half what Edwards and Kerry were winning. African-Americans made up just less than half the voters.
Kerry momentarily sidetracked
South Carolina’s polls were the first to close on the biggest day so far in the Democratic race to find a challenger to President Bush.
Voters in Missouri, Delaware, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oklahoma were also casting ballots, with a total of 269 delegates to this summer’s convention at stake. Polls were to close at 8 p.m. ET in Missouri, Delaware and Oklahoma.
Kerry, who has been on a roll since starting the race with big wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, was leading or near the top in public opinion polls in all seven states, including South Carolina. That had put him on the cusp of a sweep, but even with his defeat in South Carolina, he was still in line for a huge boost on the path to the nomination.
Edwards had planned to halt Kerry’s surge in South Carolina, while another rival, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, hoped to do the same in Oklahoma, aiming to extend the race for at least a few weeks, and possibly into early March.
“I may be losing my voice, but you haven’t lost yours,” Edwards told supporters in South Carolina. “You can go to the polls today and make an enormous difference.”
Zogby said that if Clark could also win in Oklahoma, where polls were to close at 9 p.m. ET, “then this race continues. Kerry is headed for a very good day — but perhaps short of an excellent one?”
The day’s contests offered the first national test for the candidates, who spent almost all of January battling in Iowa and New Hampshire, two largely white and rural states that hosted the first two nominating tests.
South Carolina’s was the first contest in the South and the first in a state with a large black population. The votes in Arizona and New Mexico were the first contests in states with large Hispanic populations.
Kerry is under pressure to prove that he can win on more unfamiliar terrain in the South and the West, in states with more moderate voters than Iowa and New Hampshire.
A new MSNBC/Zogby/Reuters poll showed Clark in a virtual dead heat with Kerry in Oklahoma, with a fast-closing Edwards right behind, the poll found.
Kerry led by a large margin in Missouri and Arizona and was also ahead in polls in the other three states.
Pressure to bow out
Any candidate who cannot come up with a victory will face immediate pressure from party officials and donors to bow out of the race. That could mean the end for Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who is likely to pull the plug on his campaign if he cannot spring a stunning upset.
Former front-runner Howard Dean, struggling to halt his downward slide after poor finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, is looking beyond Tuesday to Saturday’s contests in Michigan and Washington state and to Feb. 17 in Wisconsin.
While Dean, the former governor of Vermont, has become more aggressive in recent days, criticizing Kerry’s record on health care in the Senate and his acceptance of special-interest campaign donations, Kerry has largely escaped the sort of attacks that Dean faced when he was the front-runner.
Kerry, whose rise has been fueled by a belief among Democratic voters that he offers the best chance to beat Bush in November, pointed to public opinion polls that showed him leading Bush in a one-on-one match-up.
‘Republicans are scared’
“I am convinced Republicans are scared of my campaign. They know I will take it right to them,” Kerry said in Arizona.
Kerry is the only candidate who advertised and campaigned in all seven states this week, and he was almost certain to meet the 15 percent threshold required to pick up delegates in every state, even if he lost in one or two.
While Tuesday offered a rich harvest of delegates to the nominating convention, when it is completed less than 15 percent of the delegates will have been chosen.
Dean, Edwards and Clark hoped to extend the race to March 2, when huge states like New York and California vote.
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