COLUMBIA, S.C. - More blacks voted for President Bush in his re-election bid Tuesday than did four years ago, according to information from the South Carolina Election Commission.

In South Carolina, nonwhite voters accounted for more than 95 percent of the registered voters in three dozen precincts. Precinct-level results from the Election Commission show Bush picked up more votes in 29 of those precincts.

The actual ballot box gains weren't that huge. In those precincts, Bush gained just 317 votes over his 2000 results while Sen. John Kerry gained 4,470 more votes there than former vice President Al Gore in 2000.

That probably wouldn't surprise Rodney Davis, a black Benedict College police officer, who voted for Kerry on Tuesday. More young black males were "looking to secure their future other than going to the military or going to a foreign country and dying," said 32-year-old Davis. For him, the war in Iraq was the most important issue. Kerry, he said, would "produce a change."

Concerns about Social Security prompted Derrick Hall, a 31-year-old black Columbia resident to vote for Bush. "It wasn't a hard decision, no, not at all," he said. Still, Hall split his ballot and voted for Democrat Inez Tenenbaum in her unsuccessful bid against U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint for U.S. Senate.

Tuesday's election results came with a surge in nonwhite voter registration before the election.

In all, more than 49,000 people added their names to voter registration rolls, including 37,202 nonwhite voters, Election Commission figures show. That includes black voter registration statewide that grew by 25,760 voters, or 4 percent.

The precincts' election results echo findings of a poll of 1,735 South Carolina voters conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International. The exit poll, with a margin of sampling error of 4 percentage points, showed black voters supported Kerry by 85-15 margin over Bush. That was a huge increase for Republicans within a core Democrat voting group. The 2000 exit poll showed Bush winning 7 percent of that vote, compared with 91 percent for Gore.

The numbers reflect what some black leaders have felt for a while.

"I, for one, think it's a great thing that black voters are not monolithic and cannot be predicted to blindly support a particular candidate or a particular party," state Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Columbia, said.

"I think that tells you the growth and development in the African-American community that they can turn out but not necessarily vote for a party blindly. There were some issues that many people in the black community felt closer to Republicans than the Democrats," the Columbia businessman and minister said.

"The Democrats have consistently taken the African-American vote - their base - for granted," state Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson said. "We do not take our evangelical, Christian right vote for granted," Dawson said.

Values messages about gay marriage and abortion resonated with more black voters this year, Dawson said.

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Associated Press Writer Jennifer Holland Contributed to this story.