It's important to understand how political polls work. They don't just call a bunch of people and announce how the numbers came out. That is far too unscientific, because you are truly at the mercy of who you managed to find on the phone. What they do is take the numbers they have, break it down by voting blocs -- white, black, Latino, women, independents, party affiliation -- and attempt to parallel historic voting patterns. For example, if the SC Republican primary normally includes 20% Democrats and Independents (we'll refer to this as DI from now on), then the people they polled who called themselves DI will become 20% of the final result, no matter how many they randomly came up with. The problem in this primary is that they have no idea what that number should be. If you've ever been polled, they ask if you vote in elections. If you say no, then it doesn't matter what else you say. When dealing with a vote as large as they will have today, there will be a lot of "non-voters" voting. So much of these polls are just guessing.

Yesterday there were two polls that illustrate this. One of them which estimated 30% DI turnout, had Bush winning by 12 points. The other, using 35% DI in the result, had Bush up by 6. You do the math on a 40% DI figure.

Does this bode well for McCain? I don't think so. The noises I hear from the camps makes me think that Bush is going to win this. McCain has been talking about how far back they've come from and how a movement has been launched. Bush talks about winning the state. I think the Republican turnout will be unusually large, as they will be very unhappy about non-Republicans deciding their primary.

Whatever happens, this state was a turning point in the Presidential race. If McCain is the ultimate winner, SC was the beginning of the crumbling of Bush's wall of inevitability. That is really all he has going for him. An unknown nationally, he was different, a "compassionate conservative", with appeal to women and minorities. He was going to get the White House back. That Bush is gone now -- replaced by the man who spoke at the racist and religiously bigoted Bob Jones University and ran as hard to the right as any candidate we've seen. He'll never shake this off. If he is the nominee, the Democrats have the tape from this campaign and I assure you, they'll use it.

You will hear all sorts of punditry this afternoon, explanations of how the voters voted and why. But it boils down to this -- McCain represents something they like, a different kind of politician. Bush is the old-time religion, the Republican faith of their fathers. Let's see what is stronger.