Obama Dominates Clinton and Edwards in SC

Tonight in South Carolina, a state that Hillary Clinton led by double digits in the polls not two months ago, Barack Obama pulled out a sweeping, and dominating win in the Democratic primary. Obama did not win by a slim margin in a state that is considered to represent the Democratic party base with it's large African-American population, but it was a dominant 55% to 27% win over Clinton, across a broad spectrum of voter segments, the most dominant primary win by either candidate to date. John Edwards came in a disappointing third with only 18% of the vote from his home state.

Obama's win was not just an African-American voter supplied win, though according to CNN exit polls he did take around 80% of the African-American vote. But this was a win driven across the voting segment spectrum. Obama took 54% of both Male and Female votes. He took the majority of the votes across every age segment except 65 and over. He took the majority of votes regardless of what education level the voters were. He took the majority of votes regardless of what income range the voters were from. He had over 50% of the vote from people regardless of whether their most important issue was Iraq, Economy, or Health Care. And what I found most interesting was that he had nearly 50%, or more than 50%, of voters in the primary regardless of whether they identified themselves as Liberal, Moderate, or Conservative.

This was not a win on the back of just one segment of the voting spectrum. This was a complete win across almost every major definable voting segment within the state. It was complete, and it was dominating.

South Carolina has been defined as a state that represents the "base" of the Democratic party. If that is the case, then the win in SC speaks volumes about what the Democratic base is looking for. In a state that has voted Republican in the last 7 presidential elections Obama had more votes than both of the top two Republicans combined in their primary just last week.

We may have witnessed a defining moment in the 2008 Presidential election tonight.