South Carolina, Nevada cast votes in close contest

Since 1980, the Republican winner in the South Carolina primary has gone on to capture the nomination. Voting ends at 7 pm EST, with results expected soon afterward.

“I’m like a lot of people in America tonight. I’m a guy over 50 looking for a job. I hope I get the hire,” Huckabee told supporters at a Friday night rally at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

In Nevada, Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are waging another tight duel complicated by uncertainties about turnout. In 2004, only 9,000 Democrats participated in Nevada’s caucuses, and no one knows how many will show up this time.

“If you will go to your precinct caucus tomorrow for one or two hours, I promise you that I will stand up for you every single day of this campaign and every single day in the White House,” Clinton, a New York senator, told a packed gym of supporters in Las Vegas on Friday night.

Republicans also vote in Nevada, but most Republican candidates have focused their attention on the South Carolina showdown. Republican results in Nevada are expected after 3 pm EST, with Democratic results expected a few hours later.

The two states are the next battlegrounds in a seesawing race to choose candidates for November’s election to succeed President George W Bush. No one in either party has claimed the role of favourite, with the first five major contests producing five different winners.

For the winners on Saturday, the prize is a fresh jolt of energy in a White House race where momentum has been short-lived.

The Republican contenders head next to Florida for its January 29 primary, while Democrats focus on South Carolina’s January 26 primary. Both parties then turn their attention to the critical February 5 “Super Tuesday” round of 22 state contests.

Huckabee, a Baptist minister who won in Iowa, has been reminding South Carolina crowds of his Southern roots and hopes to make inroads with the state’s large bloc of evangelicals, the group that fueled his rise in Iowa.

McCain, who won in New Hampshire, saw his 2000 presidential bid crippled by a bitter loss to Bush in South Carolina and spent much of the past few years trying to mend fences with his old foes in the state.

The Arizona senator ended his South Carolina campaign on Friday with an evening rally on the USS Yorktown, a decommissioned aircraft carrier docked near Charleston.

“There is no place I would rather wind up than right here on the USS Yorktown,” McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, told supporters. “This ship epitomises the service and sacrifice of many Americans in many wars.”

In Nevada, Obama and Clinton have clashed over a plan to allow voting in casino hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, approved by a federal judge on Thursday, and over Clinton’s comments on race, seen by some as a slight on civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Minorities, led by a booming Hispanic population, could make up about 40 per cent of the state’s voters. Clinton asked Obama on Friday to denounce Spanish-language radio ads accusing her of disrespecting Hispanics.

The ads, run by a union backing Obama, were “shameless and offensive,” she said. The Obama camp said it had no control over the ads and discouraged outside ad campaigns.

Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black US President, will head to Atlanta after the Nevada vote to appear at King’s home church on Sunday.

The RACE

In S Carolina, Nevada

Republican Race

A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll on Saturday shows John McCain and Mike Huckabee in a statistical dead heat in South Carolina at 27 per cent to 26 per cent heading into the voting

Democratic Race

In Nevada, where Democrats hoped an early contest would highlight the party’s growing strength in the West, Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama 45 per cent to 39 per cent. John Edwards was a distant third at 6 per cent