Obama-57 percent Clinton 29 percent and Edwards at 13 percent.

Obama runs away with SC primary

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Barack Obama routed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially-charged South Carolina primary Saturday night, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National Convention delegates.

Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina battled for a distant second place. Either way it was a sharp setback in the state where he was born and scored a primary victory in his first presidential campaign four years ago.

About half the voters were black, according to polling place interviews, and four out of five of them supported Obama. Black women turned out in particularly large numbers. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, got a quarter of the white vote while Clinton and Edwards split the rest.

The victory was Obama’s first since he won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, scored an upset in the New Hampshire primary a few days later. They split the Nevada caucuses, she winning the turnout race, he gaining a one-delegate margin. In an historic race, she hopes to become the first woman to occupy the White House, and Obama is the strongest black contender in history.

The South Carolina primary marked the end of the first phase of the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, a series of single-state contests that winnowed the field, conferred co-front-runner status on Clinton and Obama but had relatively few delegates at stake.

That all changes in 10 days’ time, when New York, Illinois and California are among the 15 states holding primaries in a virtual nationwide primary. Another seven states and American Samoa will hold Democratic caucuses on the same day.

Obama’s “South Carolina voters rejected the politics of the past,” said Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Obama.

The first fragmentary returns showed Obama with 57 percent of the vote, Clinton gaining 29 percent and Edwards at 13 percent.

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