Obama’s decisive double digit victory (55%) over Clinton (26%) in the South Carolina Democratic primary is a major setback for Clinton campaign. Obama won more votes (~295,000) than the combined total for Hillary (~141,000) and Edwards (93,000). He won in all but two counties, see the map below, Oconee for Edwards shown in blue and Horry for Clinton shown in green

This overwhelming victory gives Obama the momentum going into the super Tuesday when nearly two dozen or so primaries/caucuses take place.
A defeated Clinton faces an uphill task that may not be entirely insurmoutable. And lets see why its possible for Clinton to lose primaries and yet win the nomination. Its all about winning majority of 4049 delegates. If a candidate has 2,025 delegates then he/she will get the nomination. Unlike Republican primaries, which are “winner take all” contests, Democratic candidates win delegates in proportion to the percentage of votes, provided a candidate has at least 15% of the total votes. So far, Clinton leads the pack with nearly 232 to Obama’s 152 delegates. These do not include Michigan and Florida, both of which were stripped of delegates by Democratic National Committed (DNC) for moving forward their primaries. If Clinton, who won Michigan by default and is leading in Florida polla, is able to convince DNC to allow Michigan and Florida to be counted among the delegates then Clinton’s delegate count becomes nearly twice that for Obama. Under the current circumstances, Clinton camp has already started talking about such change.

Having lost much of the black vote to Obama, in future primaries, Clinton may seek votes from the other growing vote bank in the Democratic party, the Latinos. She appears to be a favorite among Hispanic voters. Thus along with California (441) and New York (281), if Clinton can stake wins in in states (Arizona (67), Colorado (71), New Mexico (38)) that have substantial number of Latino voters, she will still be in competition after the super Tuesday and could continue the race even in late primaries in Virginia (101), Texas (228), Wisconsin, Pennsylvania (188), North Carolina (139), West Virginia (134). If Obama and Clinton stay competitive in the race to get more delegates this fight could continue right on upto Democratic convention in Denver, the last time something like this happened was in Democratic convention of 1952. It will certainly expose all the fault lines in the Democratic party, deplete funds of both Obama and Clinton and whoever happens to be the ultimate nominee will have to unite the party first and fight for winning the General election next, both of which are monumental tasks that if the nominee succeeds in achieving, she/he would truly deserve to be the next President!

Below is a thematic map that shows delegate counts by state primaries.

The states in red hues are the early primary states, which had primaries/caucuses in January. The green hues are for the super Tuesday states where bright green indicates higher number of delegates. The blue hues are for the late primary states, again bright color indicates higher number of delegates. Michigan and Florida are shown in black, because the delegates from those two states have not been counted (yet). For an interactive versions of the maps go to GeoCommons and search using key words Campaign finance, Election, Primary, Politics etc to explore ton of data and maps on the 2008 Presidential campaigns.

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