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Columbia, South Carolina: Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton yesterday looked toward the next battles in a chaotic White House race after scoring tough wins in the first presidential voting in the US South and West.
McCain narrowly defeated rival Mike Huckabee on Saturday in South Carolina - a state where McCain's presidential hopes were destroyed in a bitter 2000 battle that set George W. Bush on a path to the White House.
"It took us a while, but what's eight years among friends," McCain, an Arizona senator, told cheering supporters in Charleston. "We are well on our way tonight, and I feel very good."
In Nevada's Democratic race, Clinton beat Barack Obama in a close struggle that featured voting in the state's famed casino hotels and produced heated charges of irregularities.
The pair had split the first two Democratic contests. "I guess this is how the West was won," Clinton said in Las Vegas, telling reporters later: "This is one step on a long journey throughout the country."
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, won a Republican race in Nevada that his rivals largely skipped in order to concentrate on South Carolina.
No candidate in either party has claimed the front-runner's role in the race to pick the two candidates to contest the November 4 election to succeed Bush, as the first major state-by-state battles produced multiple winners.
The US presidential nominating battle now turns to the deep South, where the next fights will be South Carolina's Democratic primary on Saturday and Florida's Republican primary on January 29.
Then both parties turn their attention to the February 5 "Super Tuesday" round of 22 state contests, a massive shift from the intimate politics of early voting states to coast-to-coast flights and big-budget advertising campaigns.
Clinton's first stop after her Nevada victory was in St Louis, Missouri, a state that will vote on February 5.
"Talk to your friends and neighbours. Make it clear that we're going to be picking a president on February 5 and we have to pick someone who can be ready to lead on day one," Clinton said.
Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black US president, leads polls in South Carolina, where more than half of the primary voters are expected to be black.
The Florida Republican race on January 29 will mark the debutof former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has seen his once substantial lead in national opinion polls disappear as he sat on the sidelines through the first presidential nominating contests.
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