Edwards widens lead in South Carolina

DEMOCRAT John Edwards widened his lead over front-runner John Kerry in South Carolina and Wesley Clark held a slim advantage on Kerry in Oklahoma a day before presidential nominating contests in those states, according to the latest poll.

Kerry, still benefiting from a surge in momentum after wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, held commanding leads in Missouri and Arizona today as seven states prepared to vote in the Democratic race for the right to challenge President Bush.

Edwards, the senator from North Carolina, increased his lead over Kerry from one to five points in the latest Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll in South Carolina, a state Edwards says he must win to stay in the race.

Clark gained three points on Kerry in Oklahoma to hold a narrow one-point lead ahead of today's seven-state test, which could give Kerry a huge boost on his road to the nomination or give new life to Edwards and Clark.

North Dakota, Delaware and New Mexico also hold contests today, the biggest day so far in the Democratic race with 269 delegates to the summer nominating convention at stake.

"If Edwards wins in South Carolina and polls strongly enough to win delegates in Missouri and Oklahoma, he has some significant regional strength and can certainly make a case to go on," pollster John Zogby said.

"If Clark wins Oklahoma and comes in a strong second in Arizona, he also can move on but it is hard to see where."

One-time front-runner Howard Dean, still trying to recover from crippling losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, trails badly in all four states being polled and is looking beyond Tuesday to contests on Saturday in Michigan and Washington state and on February 17 in Wisconsin.

The poll of 600 likely primary voters in each of the four states Missouri, Arizona, South Carolina and Oklahoma was taken Friday through Sunday and has a 4.1% margin of error.

A tracking poll combines the results of the last three consecutive nights of polling . It allows pollsters to record shifts in voter sentiment as they happen.

The poll counted undecideds who were leaning toward a candidate in that candidate's total, but several states still had large pools of undecided voters, including Oklahoma with 12% and Missouri with 11%.