Join us on the campaign trail

Columbia, South Carolina

As the 2008 presidential primaries enter their decisive phase, we’ve launched a new blog to keep you up to date with all the latest developments. “Americano” will be giving you our take on what is going on from now until election day on November 4th.

I’m out in South Carolina at the moment where the issue of race is dominating campaign coverage. South Carolina is the first contested state on the Democratic side with a large African American population, 29% of South Carolinians are black and the vast majority of them vote Democratic. How Hillary Clinton fares here will tell us how damaging her comments about Martin Luther King and the general tone of her campaign—which has set about knee capping Barack Obama—have been to her standing among black voters.

A new national poll of Democratic voters shows that black and white Democratic voters have hugely different preferences. Obama is the choice of about two thirds of black voters but is only getting a quarter of white votes.