The BBC are currently reporting, while I wait to hear what the Republican South Carolina primary result turns out to be, that "in Hillary Clinton's own words" this is a big win for her. Well...of course she would say that, she needs to keep her momentum going. But is it a big win really? In reality what happened was that she slipped from a clear 20 point lead over Obama before Christmas, tainting herself with the issues about legal wranglings over where caucuses could be held and her team not helping her image in the public spotlight, ultimately beating Obama by only 6 points (it would appear).

And the causes again couldn't appear to be more clear, as they were in New Hampshire. Obama's gains from a drop in voting for Edwards are much less than Clinton's gains, with many cases of his share of demographics voting not changing between Nevada, Iowa or New Hampshire. Obama has clear strong support from what he's built up and that is unwavering. What he needs now is to secure more power where Clinton is winning, and that tends to be among the women and amongst those that are undecided up until the time they go into the booth/room.

And there is still plenty of room for worry in the Clinton camp. A win is a win but their level of playing up this victory only goes to show how fragile they feel after a roughly 15 point slip over two months. They clearly don't hold the African-American vote that seem to be vastly behind Obama more than anyone else, and consistently Clinton is unable to win the "independent" vote that would be so crucial to actually winning an election in November.

The real question though is what next for John Edwards. It is worth him staying on until South Carolina and seeing his share, but I can't help but feel his campaign will be fatally wounded by dropping at least 10 points off of his average standing in polls leading up to the event. I think that if he doesn't manage to break 15% in south Carolina, which is entirely likely, the resulting media analysis will mean it is going to be an almost impossible task to get the win he wants. The question is whether or not he significantly prefers one of the other candidates over the other and would want to help give them a 5-10% bounce. Clearly if Edwards put himself behind Obama's campaign after next weekend this Could make the end result extremely tight.

Finally, the Republican result is in, and Romney's earlier win in Nevada has been wiped off the slate by only finishing fourth in South Carolina. As far as I'm concerned this is a complete mess for the Republicans as the longer that they all go on with potentially four people as realistic contenders, with vastly different policies, the less chance there is for the Republican party to get behind one of them fully in time for the elections. Democrats will also have a gift in the sense of the divided wishes of Republican voters and the opportunities that will raise during the big campaign.