John Edwards has been playing to win Iowa, hoping to build momentum that will make him competitive with the frontrunner coming out the gate. Across all the polling I’ve seen, he is only doing well in Iowa.
The next stop after Iowa and New Hampshire is South Carolina. If Edwards, who was born in South Carolina but he grew up in North Carolina — and, yes, there is difference — can’t win or place in the season’s first Southern state primary, his campaign will likely end there.
African-Americans are arguably the most important Democratic constituency in South Carolina, and two new polls of South Carolina voters — a poll of African-Americans only from Winthrop College and ETV, South Carolina’s public television network,and a poll of all voters from the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg — shows big trouble for the Edwards campaign:
Winthrop/ETV PollOverall African American men African American women |
Times/Bloomberg pollAmong all Democrats Among African Americans |
Of course, the percentage of “Undecideds” is significant, and it is possible they cold break toward Edwards if he moves up. For now, however, they’re not feeling it.
Poll: Edwards at 3 percent among South Carolina African Americans…
Even if John Edwards does well in Iowa, his momentum could come to a crashing halt in South Carolina, where new polling shows him in low single digits among African-American voters, arguably the state’s most important constituency. If he can’t win or…