S.C. win essential for Edwards

It’s do or die for John Edwards on Tuesday.

Either he wins the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary and moves on to the next round of primaries in Tennessee and Virginia on Feb. 10, or he loses and bows out of the race.

He acknowledges he must win South Carolina, the state where he was born.

“No other state voting on Feb. 3 really matters to Edwards, so he’d best stay on the ground in the Palmetto State,” says University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato.

Edwards spent Saturday in Oklahoma, Missouri and New Mexico.

The latest Zogby International poll shows the U.S. senator from North Carolina has widened his S.C. lead over U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to 4 percentage points in a three-day tracking survey.

In the poll released Saturday, Edwards had 26 percent of the vote to 22 percent for Kerry. Everyone else trailed far behind in single digits.

Twenty-two percent remained undecided, enough to make things interesting with three days to go before the S.C. primary. Leaners were splitting evenly between Edwards and Kerry.

Kerry leads among Democrats, 25 percent, followed by Edwards at 24 percent. Edwards holds a commanding lead among independents with 32 percent, followed by Kerry with 14 percent. Edwards is also the favorite among Republicans, with 30 percent.

S.C. voters give both Kerry and Edwards high favorable ratings — 65 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

Kerry, hoping to deliver a knockout punch with a sweep of seven states Tuesday, would like nothing more than to chase Edwards out of the race.

“Edwards is his biggest competition, his biggest threat,” says Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen.

For now, Kerry is running well in all seven states, says pollster John Zogby. But he cautions the contest is not over yet if Edwards and retired Gen. Wesley Clark can at least stay where they are today.

Edwards is running third in Oklahoma and within striking distance of achieving delegates in Missouri, the biggest prize on Tuesday, Zogby notes.

Clark, who has little to show thus far for his $2.3 million in South Carolina advertising, remains strong in Oklahoma. He also appears poised for a strong second-place showing in Arizona.

“If Clark can couple that with a victory in Oklahoma, he will certainly make this pollster look twice,” Zogby says.

Edwards’ strategists were buoyed by the Zogby poll showing that Kerry was no longer gaining on the South Carolina native here.

Leaving nothing to chance, though, Edwards returns today for a campaign swing across the state that starts in Columbia, winds its way through the Pee Dee and ends in Charleston, where he will attend two Super Bowl-watching parties.

If Edwards wins South Carolina on Tuesday, experts say, his campaign still could be doomed if Kerry sweeps the other Feb. 3 states.

Kerry holds big leads in Missouri and Arizona and has closed the gap on Clark in Oklahoma, Zogby says. Realistically, he could win five states on Tuesday.

By then, Kerry will have visited all seven states to show he is running a national campaign.

“It gives him the possibility of a near-sweep or, dare we say, a real sweep,” says Sabato. “If that happens, game over.”