By IRNA
New York : Senator Barack Obama claimed a significant victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday.
The Illinois senator earned more than twice the vote that rival Senator Hillary Clinton did, 55 percent to 27 percent, unofficial returns showed.
Former Sen. John Edwards was third with 18 percent.
“Tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina,” Obama said to supporters Saturday.
A win in South Carolina was considered crucial for Obama, who won Iowa but finished second to Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Obama had 55 percent of the vote. Clinton was second with 27 percent, followed by Edwards, with 18 percent.
Obama’s victory capped a heated contest in South Carolina, the first Democratic primary in the South and the first with a largely African- American electorate.
Obama, who is hoping to become the the nation’s first
African-American president, did well with black voters, who made up about half of Saturday’s electorate, according to exit polls.
Black voters supported the Illinois senator by a margin of more than 4-to-1 over his nearest rival, exit polls indicate.
Among white voters, Obama took about a quarter of the vote, with Clinton and Edwards roughly splitting the remainder, according to exit polls.
Clinton congratulated Obama and said she was excited to move forward to the Super Tuesday contests on February 5.
“Millions and millions of Americans are going to have the chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” she told supporters at Tennessee State University.
Edwards also looked ahead to the next contests.
“Now the three of us move on to February 5, where millions of Americans will cast their vote and help shape the future of this party and help shape the future of America,” he said.
“Our campaign from the very beginning has been about one central thing, and that is to give voice to the millions of Americans who have absolutely no voice in this democracy.”
Clinton beat Obama only among elderly voters, according to exit polls.
Among voters 65 and older, Clinton beat Obama 40 to 32 percent.
But Obama handily defeated Clinton in every other bracket, and overall garnered 58 percent of the vote among 18 to 64-year-olds while 23 percent of those voters picked Clinton.
And half of those polled said both candidates shared blame for the rancor between the two camps. Of those who said one of the contenders was more to blame than the other, 21 percent blamed Clinton, and 6 percent said Obama.
The state Democratic party estimated that more than 530,000 Democrats turned out for Saturday’s primary, as compared with 445,000 voters who showed up to vote last weekend in the state’s Republican primary.
The Democratic numbers topped the GOP turnout for the first time since 1992, when 445,000 Republicans turned out to renominate President George H.W. Bush.
Obama attracted more than 290,000 votes — nearly matching the total turnout of the 2004 Democratic primary.
Following a rough campaign between Clinton and Obama, the two camps toned down the rhetoric in the past two days, returning to the issues and concentrating their firepower on the Republicans rather than on each other.
“I think the Republicans should be gracious and just say, “We have messed this thing up so much we are just going to quit and … we shouldn’t be re-elected,’ but I don’t think that is what they are going to do,” Clinton said.
South Carolina is the last big test for the Democrats before Super Tuesday, February 5, when nearly two dozen states will hold either primaries or caucuses — including such delegate-rich states as California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Florida holds its primary on Tuesday but no Democratic delegates are being awarded there because the national party is penalizing the state for moving its primary up earlier in the year.