South Carolina Nail Biter
19 January 2008It is truly a dreary day in Charleston and across the state of South Carolina. Not the best day to have a primary. We went to the polls around 10:00 this morning. Our polling place is the Greater Goodwill AME Church. When we pulled into the parking lot it was packed, so much so that we had to pull all the way around back to park, then walk around the building through the flooded parking lot in the rain. My consolation was that there was such a good turnout. Then I discovered the church was having some kind of dinner and that accounted for the majority of the parking.
We got in the building to vote and there were maybe 10-15 people in the line. The poll workers said it had been steady all morning but not a great turnout. That was a disappointment.
We cast our votes, me for Huckabee, and headed home to watch the news. Of course all morning the coverage was on Nevada where FOX News called the GOP race for Romney very early. There was a lot of speculation about how Nevada might impact South Carolina (idiotic speculation in my opinion).
The weather appears to be an obvious factor today. According to all the talking heads, Huckabee is strongest in the upstate where they’re getting snow today, though nothing is sticking according to my son in Greenville. McCain is supposed to be strongest in the Lowcountry where it has rained pretty steady all day. Who will be hurt most by the weather?
Some analysis of exit polls on FOX News I found interesting. As expected Huckabee has the highest percentage of evangelicals and McCain the highest percentage of veterans. According to the report, there has been a higher percentage of evangelical than veterans in the exit polls, not unexpected since there are more of them in the population. The most interesting part of the analysis was that conservatives were breaking for Huckabee by six points over McCain. That’s encouraging.
As of 5:00 I’ve seen no actual returns for this primary and as much as I’d love to see some numbers, I think that is preferable since it isn’t influencing voters. The bottom line is, this race is too close to call. I still think Huckabee is going to pull it out but it could be late this evening before I know if I’m right or not.
I’ll be staying up as long as it takes to follow the returns this evening and as soon as someone is declared the winner, I’ll be back to write about it. In the mean time, if you’re in South Carolina and you haven’t voted yet, get out there and do it!
Print This Post
Tags: Elections, Politics, PrimariesRelated Posts
- Romney Finally Wins One
- Defeat Lindsey Graham Blog
- McCain Wins South Carolina
- Looking Toward the South Carolina Primary
- LinkCharleston.com
No comments yet
You must be logged in to post a comment.
