Senator Barack Obama (pictured left with Tyra Banks) is looking to regain the momentum in his pursuit of the US Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in South Carolina on Saturday, following Senator Hillary Clinton’s win in Nevada over the weekend.

Clinton won 51% of the vote to Obama’s 45% in the Nevada Democratic Party caucus. However Obama took 13 delegates to Clinton’s 12 in the contest. The delegates, who will attend the Democratic Party’s national convention in August, will vote on who will be the party’s nominee in November’s presidential election. Former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards won just 4% of the vote and no delegates and Nevada effectively marks the end of his hopes of winning, though he has said he will press on.

In South Carolina, which returns 45 delegates to the Democratic Party’s national convention, almost double the number of Nevada, Obama has a 10.5% lead over Clinton in the most recent poll of polls. The support of African American voters who are said to make up approximately half of the Democrat electorate in South Carolina is said to be crucial to victory. According to some polls Obama won 80% of the African American vote in the Nevada caucus.

Clinton and Obama are to go head to head this evening in a televised debate and Obama has recorded an interview in which he has criticised Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, for the increasingly strident attacks former President Clinton (pictured right with Obama) has been making on the Obama campaign. In the interview which is to be aired on ABC television’s “Good Morning America” show shortly, Obama says:
“The former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling.
“This has become a habit, and one of the things that we’re going to have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he’s making statements that are not factually accurate.”