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Democrats head for polls

Voters headed to the polls in seven states yesterday on the biggest day of the Democratic presidential race so far, with front-runner John Kerry hoping for a strong showing that could knock rivals out of the race.

Voters in Missouri, South Carolina, Delaware, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oklahoma will cast ballots in the race to find a challenger to US President George W. Bush, with 269 delegates to this summer's nominating convention at stake.

Kerry, on a roll since starting the race with big wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, is leading or near the top in polls in all seven states, putting him on the cusp of a sweep that would make his campaign hard to stop.

But rivals John Edwards and Wesley Clark hope to halt Kerry's momentum in South Carolina and Oklahoma, respectively, giving their campaigns new life and extending the race for at least a few weeks and possibly into early March.

The voting yesterday offered the first national test for the candidates, who spent almost all of January battling in Iowa and New Hampshire, largely white and rural states that hosted the first two nominating tests.

Yesterday, candidates competed in the first contest in the South and the first in a state with a large black population, South Carolina; and the first contests in states with large Hispanic populations, Arizona and New Mexico.

Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, is under pressure to prove he can win on more unfamiliar terrain in the South and West, and in states with a more moderate electorate than in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, has admitted he must win in South Carolina to stay in the race, and polls show him with a narrow lead over Kerry. Clark, a retired general and former NATO commander, is in a virtual dead heat with Kerry in Oklahoma.

Kerry leads in polls in all of the other five states.

Anyone who could not come up with a victory yesterday will face immediate pressure from party officials and donors to bow out of the race. That could mean the end for Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is likely to pull the plug on his campaign if he cannot spring a stunning upset on Tuesday.

Former front-runner Howard Dean, struggling to halt his downward slide after poor finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, is largely looking beyond yesterday and focusing instead on Saturday, when Michigan and Washington will host nominating contests, and to Feb. 17 in Wisconsin.

Dean has become more aggressive in recent days, criticizing Kerry's record on health care in the Senate and his acceptance of special interest campaign donations; otherwise, Kerry has largely escaped the sort of attacks that Dean faced regularly when he was the front-runner.

Kerry is the only candidate who advertised and campaigned in all seven of the states this week, and is almost certain to meet the 15 percent threshold required to pick up delegates in every state, even if he loses.

While yesterday offered a rich harvest of delegates to the nominating convention, when it is completed only about 10 percent of the delegates to the convention will have been chosen.

Dean and Kerry's other rivals hope to extend the race to March 2, when huge states like New York and California will vote.
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