* 6:00 pm - CNN and others have already called the race for Obama.

* The exit poll is here.

* Automatically updating news reports culled from numerous sources…

*** SUNDAY UPDATE *** Ted Kennedy to endorse Obama…

Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, will announce his backing of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Washington tomorrow, ABC News reported, citing an unidentified person close to Kennedy.

“I’ll let Ted Kennedy speak for himself,'’ Illinois Senator Barack Obama said on ABC’s “This Week'’ program today. “And nobody does it better. But obviously, any of the Democratic candidates would love to have Ted Kennedy’s support. And we have certainly actively sought it.'’

* From last night…

Two sources say [Hillary Clinton has] directed a flood of calls [Kennedy’s] way, with everyone from union leaders to his Massachusetts constituents scrambling to stop what Clinton’s camp is worried could be an endorsement of Obama.

* And then there’s this…

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS) will deliver the Democratic response to the State of the Union on Monday. And then Tuesday or Wednesday, she plans to endorse Barack Obama, numerous Democratic sources said.

* Obama’s victory speech…

* 8:01 pm - On closer examination, the AP may be simply sticking with their spin by political writer Ron Fournier that the results would all be about a racial divide. Here’s what Fournier wrote yesterday…

What [Clinton] has won in South Carolina is the larger campaign to polarize voters around race and marginalize Obama (in the insidious words of one of her top advisers) as “The Black Candidate.”

* But, is that what really happened, or did Clinton fail? From MSNBC’s First Read tonight…

As for the white vote, Obama did not win the majority but neither did either of his two rivals. In fact, while Clinton got 36% of the white vote — it really was pretty close to a three-way split; Edwards got 40% and Obama 24%.

An MSNBC/McClatchy poll released on Thursday showed Obama’s support among white voters to be 10%. So consider his showing tonight a big improvement.

The AP might want to adjust its outlook.

* 7:47 - Tim Russert on Obama’s win…

* 7:44 pm - Ben Smith at the Politico…

For the first time, it occurs to me, Obama really won the expectations game: Those recent polls set up an expectation of racial polarization, and primed us to write that story, and now the story will be about Obama’s healthy support from whites.

* Um, maybe not. Here’s the AP instant analysis…

Obama won Iowa, one of the whitest states in the country, and also won more than a third of white voters in multi-candidate contests in New Hampshire and Nevada — even though Clinton won both states.

But in South Carolina, that figure plummeted and showed a vast division between the races — Obama won just a quarter of white voters and 80 percent of blacks, the exit poll showed. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton split most of the white vote.

* 7:35 pm - Clinton’s camp appears to have over-sold the possibility of a close race in South Carolina. Mike Flannery filed this report about an hour before the polls closed…

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign worked all week to convince reporters and others that anything less than a double-digit victory by Obama should be redefined as a victory for her — an argument echoed Saturday by a supporter from Illinois, J.B. Pritzker.

Oops.

* 7:29 pm - Apparently, there will be no gigantic endorsement tomorrow. A member of the Kennedy family will likely give Obama the nod, but not Ted.

*** UPDATE *** The endorser turns out to be Caroline Kennedy.

* 7:11 pm - All the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in Florida, but this e-mail just arrived from Clinton’s campaign…

“We now turn our attention to the millions of Americans who will make their voices heard in Florida and the twenty-two states as well as American Samoa who will vote on February 5th.”

* 7:10 pm - Josh Marshall on Bill and Hillary Clinton…

The presidency is a singular job. It should stay that way. And it’s precisely because I’m looking forward to supporting her if she is the nominee that I hate seeing her being overshadowed by her spouse and having her husband bigfoot the process which diminishes her and makes me think her presidency could be a 4 year soap opera where Bill won’t shut up and let her have a shot at doing the job.

* 7:04 pm - David Axelrod…

“This was a very, very strong repudiation of the tactics used here,” Axelrod said. “Divisiveness would rule, the old techniques of slash and burn politics was working — that was the story line for the past 10 days. The people of South Carolina were resolute that, ‘We don’t want to go there. This is about the future, not the past.’ “

* 6:47 pm - Closer to home…

Chicago set a new single-day record for Early Voting today with nearly 5,800 ballots cast, ahead of the traditional Early Voting “peak week.” (The previous record was 5,078 ballots cast in the last day of Early Voting before the 2007 municipal election.)

*** 6:35 pm *** Lynn Sweet has what could be the scoop of the day…

And that big endorsement I hear is coming….the two biggest out there are Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) and former Vice President Al Gore.

UPDATE: Ms. Sweet just sent me an AIM in response to a query from me saying she was “just noting the two biggest endorsements out there.”

* 6:17 pm - Obama won the female vote 55-29.

But, Edwards won white males with 44 percent, with Obama and Clinton were essentially tied. Clinton won white females with 42 percent, to 35 for Edwards and 22 for Obama. Black females went for Obama 82-17.

* 6:15 pm - Obama won independent voters with 40 percent, to 35 percent for Edwards and just 24 percent for Clinton. Obama also won Democratic voters with 58 percent, to 28 for Clinton.

* 6:10 pm - From the exit polls…

Roughly 6 in 10 South Carolina Democratic primary voters said Bill Clinton’s campaigning was important in how they ultimately decided to vote, and of those voters, 47 percent went for Barack Obama while only 38 percent went for Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, the exit polls also indicate Obama easily beat Clinton among those voters who decided in the last three days — when news reports heavily covered the former president’s heightened criticisms of Obama. Twenty percent of South Carolina Democrats made their decision in the last three days and 57 percent of them chose Obama, while only 18 percent picked Clinton

* 5:35 pm - A friend who is working in South Carolina for Obama today sends along this e-mail with a picture…

I took this picture outside a polling place this morning at a church.. You don’t see this too much in cook county.

He’s right. You don’t see signs like this around these parts…

* 5:08 pm - The AP won’t release the head-to-head results from the S. Carolina exit polls until voting has ended in about an hour, but here is a snippet of what they did write about…

Interviews with voters as they left their polling places indicated about half the electorate was black.

Half the voters said the economy was the most important issue in the race. About one quarter picked health care. And only one in five said it was the war in Iraq, underscoring the extent to which the once-dominant issue has faded in the face of financial concerns.

Roughly half the voters said former President Clinton’s campaigning for his wife was very important to their choice.