Barack storms South Carolina

Lets be honest, we all expected an Obama win last night. Most polls had him at 15 points over Hillary. But the final result was a landslide. Obama won with 55% of the vote, with Clinton in 2nd place with 27% of the vote, and Edwards with 18%. This is great news for Obama, and now the two front runners go into Super Tuesday with two wins each. Clinton was obviously not expecting to win, with her leaving for Tennessee before the votes were counted. Obama in his victory speech told his supporters that this proved the cynics wrong, that Iowa was not just a fluke, and criticised the candidates representing the status quo of Washington, a thinly veiled dig at the Clinton attacks this week.

Bill Clinton played down the victory, and has been accused of marginalising Obama as the black candidate. He proceeded to say that Jesse Jackson won the state in 84 and 88, and it was the large black population that won it for Obama. This is true to an extent, 55% of the voters were indeed African American and Obama won about 80% of these votes. He did not do so well with the white vote, winning just over a quarter with Clinton and Edwards winning 40% each. But as Obama said, he won in Iowa which is a state with a virtually all white population and was only a few points behind Hillary in New Hampshire, another all white state.

This of course makes Super Tuesday even harder to predict. 24 states cast their votes and its too close to call to see who will prevail. Hillary is focusing on the larger states such as California and New York, with Obama focusing his attentions on the Southern states. But what does this all mean for John Edwards. He has repeated that he will stay in the race, despite not winning or coming second in South Carolina, a state that he won in 2004. It seems by now that he is not going to win, and is staying in the race to break a possible tie between the two, with the promise of a cushy job in exchange for delegates.

The Republicans meanwhile go into Florida on Tuesday with Guiliani in an unprecedented third place, being McCain and Romney. This would be an utter disaster for Guliani but even if he loses he will not quit, and will stay in until after Super Tuesday. In the latest endorsement news the Governor of Florida Charlie Crist has backed John McCain, and Obama has the Chicago Tribune. He also has arguably got a more lucrative endorsement than Hillary's New York Times with Caroline Kennedy backing him. Kennedy compared Obama to her late father, and that is going to work highly in his favour.

So we head into Florida and Super Tuesday again with the race no clearer. In the coming weeks the race will get even nastier, the attacks coming thick and fast.