“You cannot underestimate Kerry’s wins tonight,” Glickman said. “Kerry remains the strongest candidate. His speech tonight was exceptionally powerful.”

Even so, Kerry’s supporters in South Carolina had hoped for a win in the state.

“For the amount of time Kerry has been in this state to do so well, it shows how electable he really is,” said Kerry supporter Lakshmi Sridharan ’06, who volunteered here for the campaign over the past week.

As the Kerry and Edwards campaigns gathered momentum from yesterday’s results, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman’s efforts sputtered to a close.

Lieberman exited the race after a disappointing showing in Delaware.

Former Vermont Governor and onetime Democratic frontrunner Howard B. Dean was polling in fifth place in South Carolina at press time, trailing behind the Rev. Al Sharpton and Clark.

“Nobody’s happy about it obviously,” Greg M. Schmidt ’06 said of Dean’s showing.

An HCD officer and Dean supporter, Schmidt volunteered for the campaign here this week. But Schmidt noted that Dean had decided to bypass last night’s slate of primaries and look ahead to Michigan and Washington.

Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree, an adviser to Sharpton, said the candidate’s third-place showing was proof that Sharpton “has to be taken seriously.”

“[Sharpton] continues raising issues that matter to a broad segment of the community that feels disenfranchised,” Ogletree said.

“He continues to be a persistent factor” in the race, Ogletree said.

Harvard in Charleston

Polls opened at 7 a.m. yesterday morning in SouthCarolina, and the campaigns got into gear early.

The Dean volunteers were up first, meeting at their downtown headquarters at 5:45 a.m.

According to David C. Marshall ’07, the group then traveled to an “undisclosed location” in Charleston for a strategy meeting with the entire local Dean staff. A fire alarm went off as the meeting was about to begin, leading some staff members to suspect foul play on the part of rival campaigns, Marshall said.