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Barack Obama's landslide win in South Carolina was apparent early on tonight, leaving The Fix ample time to tiptoe through the exit polls in an attempt to dissect just what happened in the Palmetto State. Barack Obama waves to the crowd as he takes the stage with his wife Michelle during a South Carolina primary victory party in Columbia. (AP) This first set of thoughts is -- of course -- not comprehensive, so please use the comments below to add anything important I may have missed. * The focus of the coverage is likely to be on Obama's 80+ percent showing among black voters. But it's worth noting that not only did he win one in every four white voters, according to exit polls, but he ran almost dead even with Hillary Clinton among white males (29 percent for Clinton, 27 percent for Obama). Depending on what John Edwards decides to do, that result could have major implications heading into Feb. 5. If Edwards drops out -- still an unlikely prospect -- before Super Tuesday, these numbers suggest Obama could well be competitive among white men with Clinton, a potentially powerful broadening of his coalition. * Voters' concerns about domestic issues -- health care and the economy -- have surged over the last three weeks. In Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses, just 35 percent of Democratic voters named the economy as the most important issue in the election, the same percentage who chose the war in Iraq. Five days later in New Hampshire, 39 percent of voters chose the economy as the key issue while 30 percent named the war. In the Nevada Democratic caucuses, fully half of those who participated said the economy was their No. 1 issue while just 23 percent chose health care and 22 percent the war in Iraq. Today in South Carolina, 53 percent chose the economy as compared to 26 percent who said health care and 18 percent who named the war. Although it was not apparent in today's vote, those trend lines would seem to work in Clinton's favor. She is well versed and comfortable talking about both issues, but when it comes to the war in Iraq she still has trouble explaining her 2002 vote to authorize it to the decidedly anti-war base of the party. * Women, again, made up a strong majority of the Democratic electorate -- 61 percent, according to today's exit polls. But unlike in New Hampshire and Nevada, it was Obama, not Clinton, claiming the double-digit win among women. Overall, Obama won women 53 percent to 30 percent even though a racial divide was clear -- Obama won black women 79 percent to 19 percent over Clinton while the New York senator won non-black females 43 percent to 23 percent. * Obama's dominance of the black vote in South Carolina is a remarkable accomplishment. But looking ahead to the Super Tuesday states, black voters will not be as dominant. Of the ten Feb. 5 states in which exit polling was conducted in the 2004 Democratic presidential race, only one -- Georgia -- has a similar percentage of black voters (47 percent). In 2004, 23 percent of the Tennessee Democratic electorate and 20 percent of the New York electorate was black. Obama will need to make gains among white voters to win as convincingly a week from Tuesday. * As Obama was taking the stage to deliver his victory speech, his campaign was blasting around the text of an endorsement of their candidate by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter for the late President John F. Kennedy. It was a nice confluence of developments for Obama -- an affirmation of the movement capacity of his campaign. Since JFK's 1963 assassination -- and RFK's five years later -- the Democratic Party has been looking for the second (or third) coming of that sort of inspirational leader. Caroline Kennedy's endorsement should help Obama make that connection -- either explicitly or implicitly. * Change continues to be the governing principle of the Democratic primaries. Fifty-three percent of South Carolina voters cited change as the top attribute in picking a candidate -- remarkably consistent with the numbers supporting change in Iowa (52 percent), New Hampshire (54 percent) and Nevada (50 percent). That trend line is very good news for Obama. Among those voters who cited change as the key element in picking their candidate in South Carolina, Obama beat Clinton 75 percent to 15 percent. * The final question of the exit poll sought to measure the "Bill effect" ("In your vote in today's presidential primary, how would you rate the importance of Bill Clinton?") But because of its ambiguous wording, the question doesn't provide the sort of clarity we had hoped for. Nearly six-in-ten voters said Bill Clinton was either a "very" or "somewhat" important factor in their vote and, among that group, Obama won 48 percent to 37 percent. Among the 40 percent of voters who said Bill Clinton was not an important factor or not at all a factor, Obama lapped the field -- taking 62 percent to 25 percent for Edwards and 13 percent for Hillary Clinton. Note: Please upgrade your Flash plug-in to view our enhanced content.