The Arizona senator's film choice: "There Will Be Blood," a historical epic set in California's oil-boom days of the early 20th century.

McCain told those traveling with him on his campaign bus that he had slept poorly and was concerned about how the inclement weather would affect his chances. "It's cold, it's raining and upstate, it's snow. ... It's so unpredictable."

Either way, "We'll just go out and campaign hard," he said. "Obviously South Carolina's very important. I said we would win here. But exactly how it plays out in the grand scheme of things, I don't know." McCain is attempting to reclaim momentum after his second-place finish in Michigan. South Carolina derailed his presidential quest in 2000.

McCain accompanied South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell and his family members to their Charleston voting precinct.

"You can't go in," Cindy McCain told her husband as they approached the polling place, a school.

Harrell told McCain that, actually, South Carolina law did permit candidates to go in—to check that their names were correctly on the ballot but not to campaign.

McCain declined. "It would be too disruptive," he said. "Maybe the key is we tell every polling place we're going to come and talk to a lot of people outside."

He shook hands with a half-dozen or so voters outside St. Andrews school and then left.

Earlier, McCain toured Force Protection Industries, which makes an assortment of heavily armored equipment for the Defense Department.

Speaking to employees through a megaphone, McCain told them the vehicles they manufacture make U.S. troops "much more capable of defeating an implacable enemy. ... You're the best of America, thank you."

Cindy McCain climbed into the driver's seat of one of the trucks. "Take it up to 90," McCain told her.

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