nv1962

How Senator Obama lost the primary in South Carolina

The results are crystal clear: Senator Barack Obama scored a massive win in the Democratic primaries in South Carolina. He received 55% of the vote, doubling the votes for Senator Hillary Clinton (27%) while Senator John Edwards came in disappointingly third, with 18% of the votes. In estimated delegates, that means (as projected at this time) 25 delegates for Obama, 12 for Clinton and 8 for Edwards.

So, what’s up with the title for this entry?

The conventional wisdom that is bolting its way through the internets on a wave of euphoria has it that Obama’s campaign in South Carolina managed to overcome the big safe blocks that voted for Senator Clinton, making him appealing to a broad (and, dare I say it: ethnically diverse) spectrum of Democratic voters.

Except, he didn’t.

He very convincingly repeated the block vote we saw here in Nevada, where a whopping 83% of the Black voters in this state backed Senator Obama. According to the exit poll in South Carolina, 78% of the Black voters there did exactly the same. Now, with the Black vote comprising a massive 55% of the total voters in the Democratic primaries there, that makes a position that he somehow pulled off a major cross-over vote from previously “Clinton strongholds” (Democrats over 45 years, women, Hispanic) strenuous at best.

Put differently: if one were to “look through” the Black votes, to see the votes as distributed among all other groups, not that much substantially has changed: in that context, women still strongly support Clinton (not only that - Obama would come in third among them!) and things wouldn’t be much better for him among voters of 45 years and older. Among lower income groups, not much different. On and on, again: based on the numbers in that exit poll. Oh yeah: of all Democratic voters in the South Carolina primaries, about 1% was Hispanic today - another group that will be a whole lot more relevant in upcoming major primaries but in this state number so few, that it simply couldn’t have had any measurable or certainly meaningful impact.

Which brings me to the conclusion: South Carolina is, by all means, a deserved big win for a meritorious campaign. However, barring what at this point looks like a very unlikely, truly massive SC bounce in Florida, I’m afraid that it’ll be over stone cold for Senator Obama after the dust has settled on February 5.

The South Carolina primaries are, as I read it from the naked numbers, his last hurrah.