Obama wins South Carolina in racially charged primary

WASHINGTON: The African-American democratic candidate Barack Obama, aspiring to be the party's nominee for the Presidential showdown, stood his ground by decisively defeating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially- charged South Carolina primary.
    
According to some analysts Obama 'routed' Senator Clinton in South Carolina where more than fifty per cent of the voters were black and four out of five supported him.
    
Among white voters, Obama took only about a quarter of the vote, with Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards roughly splitting the remainder, those polls indicated.
    
Edwards came in third, a sharp setback in the state where he was born and scored a primary victory in his first presidential campaign four years ago.
    
Black voters turned out in large numbers for the Illinois senator and propelled him to victory, giving Obama a major boost as the Democratic nominating contest now heads to Super Tuesday. Some have seen Senator Clinton's loss as particularly 'painful'.
    
Obama was widely anticipated to emerge victorious in the race, which saw a new level of vitriol dominate the Democratic contest in recent days as the former president Bill Clinton campaigned vigorously on behalf of his wife. But the nomination race remains wide open as South Carolina only set the stage for Super Duper Tuesday when nearly two dozen states including some of the big ones like New York, Illinois, California and Ohio get to pick the candidates.
    
In the last hours of the campaigning Senator Clinton and her team tried to dampen or lower expectations in South Carolina.