Every presidential election, students at Washington and Lee University in the state of Virginia hold a mock nominating convention to select the person they believe will be the nominee for the party that does not hold the White House — and they have a history of being pretty good at it.
 
On Saturday, they named New York Sen. Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee over rivals Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
 
“We had to look past what we wanted to happen and instead to what the states will do in reality,” said Mary Childs, a senior at the private liberal arts college in Lexington, Va., and personally an Obama supporter.
 
While many schools hold mock conventions, Washington and Lee’s is seen as an important one to watch because the school has only been wrong once since 1948 — when they picked Ted Kennedy over George McGovern in 1972.
 
Washington and Lee also argues it is the most accurate mock convention overall, correctly picking the nominee 18 out of 23 times since it began the exercise in 1908.
 
“When asked for the reason for this series of perfect forecasts, the W&L students insist upon one word alone — research,” says the school’s Web site set up for the mock convention.
 
“Acknowledging that no college campus can be regarded fairly as a cross-section of the voting public, the students depend totally on ‘grass-roots’ research carried out in all fifty states. Indeed, even personal political preferences are put aside in preparation for an accurate convention,” it says.  

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane (Clinton at a campaign stop in South Carolina.)

UPDATED with results.

While Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has handily won the South Carolina primary contest, the battle was on for second place. 
 
Rival John Edwards, who won the state in 2004 but has yet to come in first in any of the 2008 nominating contests, failed to top Hillary Clinton for the silver medal in the southern state.
 
Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, was seen as needing to the win to jump-start his campaign.
 
Coming in third would have been a bit embarrassing for Clinton after she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, spent a significant amount of time campaigning in the state and she had momentum from winning the primaries New Hampshire and Nevada. 
 
In Iowa, Obama came in first and she placed third, narrowly trailing Edwards. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Clinton and Edwards at a Martin Luther King, Jr. rally earlier this week.)
 

COLUMBIA, S.C. - For Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, even the press credentials have to send a message.

When journalists arrived at Edwards’ primary night party location to pick up credentials, they found an interesting quote on them: ”Representing the Grown-Up Wing of the Democratic Party”.

Edwards, who was born in South Carolina and needs a win in the state since he has yet to place first in the early voting contests, accused his two Democratic opponents, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, of squabbling instead of talking about policy during the last debate earlier this week that was seen as extremely contentious.

The 54-year-old former senator from North Carolina has seized on tit-for-tat attacks between Clinton and Obama as a chance to urge voters to choose him because he is a “grown-up”. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Veteran Sen. John McCain, 71, fielded a question at a rally on Saturday about whether his age was an issue as he battles to become the Republican Party’s pick for president in the state’s upcoming primary contest.  
 
His reply to voters attending the event? They should get to know his mother, the feisty and opinionated Roberta McCain, 95.
 
Mrs. McCain cropped up in the campaign earlier this week when she told a television interviewer that her son had no support “whatsoever” within the Republican Party.
 
Far from feeling stung at the age comment, McCain launched into an anecdote on Saturday celebrating her vigor.
 
“Last Christmas she wanted to drive around France, so she flew to Paris and tried to rent a car, but they said she was too old,” he told the military veterans and retirees.
 
“So she bought one and drove around France. That’s my girl! That’s my girl!” he said, to laughter.
    
He went on to assure voters that his ability to campaign was undimmed by age.
 
“I can out campaign anyone, it invigorates me.”  

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott (McCain celebrates a victory in South Carolina’s primary earlier this month as his mother watches from the side of the stage.)

CHARLESTON, S.C. - The campaign plane may be Sen. Hillary Clinton’s but her husband still has the political clout to keep it on the ground.

Leaving a rally in Charleston late on Friday night, the presidential candidate, her staff and the press rushed on board the campaign plane to fly back to hotels in Columbia, S.C.

But former president Bill Clinton climbed the staircase into the rear of the plane and stopped to say hello to reporters and photographers, already clustered around plates of free food.

He began describing the campaign stops he made that day and the kinds of questions he was asked. College students, he said, often ask about Darfur.

Then Clinton started to talk about Iraq, and the shoulders of a half dozen Secret Service agents, stuck standing in the plane’s aisle behind him, slumped.

As Clinton moved onto the topic of refugees, a member of his wife’s staff, balancing three pizza boxes, tried in vain to walk past. Looking oblivious, Clinton just kept talking.

A flight attendant tried to move matters along, getting on the loudspeaker to request that passengers take their seats. Clinton stood his ground. The frustrated flight attendant tried again, announcing that sitting down during takeoff was a federal regulation.

Clinton began to explain the origin of a colorful string bracelet he wears on his wrist, to the audible groans of the the Secret Service, still standing behind him in the aisle.

One agent finally broke his stoic silence.

“Stop nodding your heads like you’re listening,” he muttered to anyone within hearing distance. “Just stare blankly like we do.”

Ending his soliloquy on world affairs, the former president walked to his seat at the front of his wife’s campaign plane. The lights dimmed, and the jet began to taxi down the runway. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Sen. Hillary Clinton took her quest for votes in South Carolina on Friday to an historically black college, where her supporters argued that the state’s presidential nominating primary on Saturday is not about race.

Among the most eloquent was Bernice Scott, a local county council member, who introduced Clinton at Benedict College by saying: “We’ve got to pull everybody together. This is not going to be about gender. This is not going to be about race.”

“So please do not get into this kind of politics. It ain’t worth it. We’re starving, we’re hungry for justice,” she said.

“This world is in such a mess, ya’ll, we’ve got to hit the ground running,” she added. “Old people like me have to give the kids money to help the grandkids out. I don’t want to do that at this age, but our country is in such a mess, that’s what were doing.”

Benedict College, where Clinton spoke, was founded in 1870 on a former plantation to provide education for newly emancipated African Americans.

Clinton’s supporters made thinly veiled references to those who support her Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama. Obama holds a strong lead in South Carolina polls, particularly among black voters.

Stacey Jones, a dean at the college, said: “For some of us, it may take a very, very bold step to walk into that voting booth and focus on our community’s future rather than acting on pure emotion.”

David Dinkins, New York’s first black mayor, also was there and said he backs Clinton out of friendship, loyalty and respect for her qualifications.

“Lofty rhetoric is nice but ultimately, you’ve got to govern,” Dinkins said. “We need someone with the capacity to govern, someone who has proven that she has the capacity.”

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Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Clinton talks to supporters after a campaign stop in South Carolina.)

BOCA RATON, Fla. - When Republican presidential candidate John McCain talks to reporters about winning next Tuesday’s primary in Florida, he raps with his knuckles on the wooden table top in the campaign bus for luck.
 
Knocking on wood is just one of many superstitions that the Arizona senator has taken with him on the road as he campaigns for the nomination to stand as his party’s candidate for president in the Nov. 4 elections.
 
It comes, he says, from defying all the odds to survive as U.S. Navy pilot in Vietnam, during which he was shot down over Hanoi, beaten by a mob, and then spent more than five years in jail during which he was tortured.
 
“Under any rational set of circumstances I would be dead long ago, so why not believe in a little bit  of luck? … Anything that can be viewed as superstitious, I embrace.” he told reporters travelling with him on his bus dubbed the Straight Talk Express.
 
As well as rapping on wood — actually plastic wood veneer on the bus — he carries a lucky penny in his pocket, and a green elastic band on his wrist, which he snaps, saying “luck of the Irish.”
 
His close friend and political ally South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, travelling with McCain on Friday, smiled and said superstition is all a part of being a fighter pilot.
 
“I have not met a fighter pilot who isn’t that way. They live on the edge. They have to believe it gives them an advantage.”  

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria (McCain steps off his bus at a Florida airport with his wife.)

MIAMI - The unexpected sight of empty seats is unsettling for candidates jockeying for an edge in the race for the White House. At a tightly orchestrated campaign event, it can telegraph trouble — from fading popularity to lack of enthusiasm in a key voting bloc.

There were plenty of empty seats in the Miami Hilton Hotel ballroom on Friday when Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney addressed the Latin Builders Association, an influential group in Florida’s tight Republican nominating race.

The group holds big sway with Florida’s Hispanic voters,
especially Miami’s Cuban-Americans, who make up about 10 percent of the Republican primary voters.

As Romney began his address at around 8:30 a.m., about 170 of the 240 available were filled.

The problem, locals say, is Romney’s hard-line stance on immigration, which goes down poorly with many Hispanic voters.

As Reuters correspondent Tim Gaynor wrote from Palm Beach on Thursday, the issue of U.S. border security and what to do with about 12 million illegal immigrants works in favor of Romney’s top rival in Florida, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Analysts and Florida voters say McCain’s support for secure borders, a guestworker program and a “compassionate” approach to illegal immigration, has resonated, particularly in south Florida, which has a large Latino community.

Romney’s tougher stance is less popular.

“We’ve got to enforce the law, welcoming legal immigration but ending illegal immigration,” he says at most campaign events.

Neck-and-neck with McCain in polls, Romney made a bid for Hispanic voters in his speech on Friday, recalling how the original $37 million fund for a venture capital firm he founded in 1984, Bain Capital, was raised entirely from private individuals led by Ricardo Poma, a Salvadoran businessman living in Miami.

“What you have done with the city of Miami is transform a city that was old and tired into a city that has become a gateway, or a connection point, between North America and Latin America,” he told the builders association. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Joe Skipper (Romney talks with supporters in Miami.)

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama made an appearance — via satellite while campaigning in Beaufort, South Carolina — on David Letterman’s “Late Show” on Thursday to read the show’s traditional “Top 10″ list. 

The Top 10 Barack Obama campaign promises:

    10. To keep the budget balanced, I’ll rent the Situation Room for sweet 16s.
    9. I will double your tax money at the craps table.
    8. Appoint Mitt Romney secretary of lookin’ good.
    7. If you bring a gator to the White House, I’ll wrassle it.
    6. I’ll put Regis on the nickel.
    5. I’ll rename the 10th month of the year “Barack-tober.”
    4. I won’t let Apple release the new and improved iPod the day after you bought the previous model.
    3. I’ll find money in the budget to buy Letterman a decent hairpiece.
    2. Pronounce the word nuclear, nuclear.
    1. Three words:  Vice President Oprah.

When the Top 10 was finished, Letterman said, “Sen. Barack Obama, thank you very much for helping us out, senator.  Good luck with the campaign.”

Obama replied, “Thank you so much, David, but you can’t muss my hair” — a reference to Letterman messing up rival John Edwards’s hair during his Late Show appearance on Tuesday.

Said Letterman, “OK, whatever you say.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott (Obama speaks during a town hall in South Carolina.)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - As the Republican race for the White House tightens, front-runners John McCain and Mitt Romney are looking for a boost from an unlikely ally — former rival Fred Thompson.Romney, the multimillionaire former Massachusetts governor, announced on Thursday his campaign had hired 10 staffers from “Lawyers for Fred Thompson,” a support group that had rallied behind the former Tennessee senator and Hollywood actor.

That came a day after Romney picked up the endorsement of a high-profile Thompson backer, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran.

Not to be outdone, McCain said on Thursday that Thompson’s former national fundraising chairman, Scooter Clippard, had signed up to McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” as a national finance co-chair.

“Fred made an invaluable contribution to this race and always enriched the discussion of ideas for America’s future,” McCain said in a statement.

The skirmish for supporters follows Thompson’s announcement on Tuesday that he had dropped out of the Republican race after finishing third in South Carolina’s primary on Saturday — behind McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Romney, a former venture capitalist, is presenting himself as the most conservative of the bunch in hope of rallying the social, economic and security wings of the Republican Party, whose establishment has clashed with the maverick McCain.

On the campaign trail, he has begun to praise Thompson, saying among other things he will miss his humor at debates. “He is a delightful character,” he said in Tampa on Wednesday.

Later he added, “in some respects his departure from the campaign inures to my benefit. I think some of those people who are really concentrated on all three branches of conservatism will support my campaign.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria