During 2007, South Carolina ranked behind only Iowa and New Hampshire in terms of candidate visits and campaign spending. However, it now seems that both Michigan and Nevada have surpassed South Carolina in terms of importance to the campaign. On the Republican side, a Romney win in Michigan probably means that McCain skips South Carolina to focus on what should be a safe win in Nevada. With Romney and Giuliani already pulling out of South Carolina, if McCain pulls out too, it would deny Huckabee virtually any benefit from winning the state. then again, if McCain wins Michigan, he then has a very realistic chance of knocking out Romney and mortally wounding Huckabee by winning South Carolina, thus cementing his frontrunner status. As such, Michigan has become more pivotal than South Carolina for Republicans.
On the Democratic side, Clinton seems to be skipping South Carolina altogether, considering that she hasn’t visited the state since November 27th (and before that, since October 29th). (stupid Washington Post campaign tracker) Clinton actually now has more events in Nevada than she does in South Carolina. Since South Carolina alone probably won’t be enough for Obama to catch Clinton nationally, the Nevada caucuses could be the turning point in the campaign, determining whether Clinton heads into February 5th as the favorite, or whether Obama and Clinton are roughly tied before the quasi-national primary. And so, Nevada has surpassed South Carolina in importance on the Democratic side as well.
No rest for the weary. January 15th and January 19th now loom as just as important as Iowa and New Hampshire once were. Here are today’s numbers:
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