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Posted: January 19, 2008 9:44 PM
McCain Scores Critical Victory in South Carolina
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Sen. John McCain was projected to win a critical victory in the South Carolina GOP primary Saturday, exorcizing the ghost of the 2000 campaign when the Palmetto State dealt the Arizona Republican’s campaign a mortal blow.

“It just took us awhile, that’s all,” he told the Associated Press in an interview. “Eight years is not a long time.”

The Arizona senator added to his New Hampshire victory, helped by the support of many of the political establishment that had supported then-Gov. George W. Bush in 2000.

“Everybody knows him better now,” South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster told the Arizona Republic. “They know he’s pro-life. They know he’s pro-family. They know he wants to reduce taxes and is for fiscal conservatism. All of these things that he stands for are very important to what is called the values voter.”

But beyond his work courting the Republican base, McCain worked to sharpen his message, saying it is his constancy that would help him among Republican voters disaffected by the current state of the party.

“You may not have always agreed with him on every issue,” one South Carolina state legislator told “Dan Balz of the Washington Post”: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/18/mccain_and_the_disaffected_gop_1.html, “but you knew where he stood.”

According to exit polls conducted by the Associated Press, white evangelicals and cultural conservatives turned out in large numbers at the polls, despite nasty weather throughout much of the state.

The growth of moderate voters in the state over the last eight years also appeared to help. Some 25 percent of GOP voters called themselves moderates and among those, McCain beat Huckabee by more than 2-to-1. He also easily outdistanced his competition among older voters — and a quarter were at least age 65.

Huckabee found solid support among religious voters, a key of his support as at least half of those voting were white evangelical or born-again Christians, while six in 10 said they attended religious services at least weekly. Huckabee won nearly 40 percent of those voters, with McCain garnering about 25 percent.

Like in Nevada, Republican voters said that the state of the economy was the most important issue driving their decision with illegal immigration running second, according to the survey of 1,154 voters leaving 35 precincts in South Carolina’s Republican primary.