South Carolina: President Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary, giving him the kind of emphatic result he no doubt envisioned when he made the state the first contest on the Democrats’ presidential nominating calendar.
The election gives Biden the first set of delegates required to claim the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in Aug. Biden vowed that South Carolina would once again send him to the White House. “The people of South Carolina have spoken again, and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the presidency again - and making Donald Trump a loser again,” Biden said in a statement released by his campaign.
Biden won an overwhelming majority of South Carolina Democrats, more than 96% with 80% of the vote counted - dominating every county with more than 95% of the vote, including in heavily Black areas. His campaign had wanted South Carolina to prove that the party’s base - particularly Black voters - remain devoted to Biden and would turn out for him in large numbers. Black voters are critical to Biden’s success in battleground states, but transposing South Carolina’s results in Feb to Nov voting in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia is a tricky proposition, given that Saturday’s primary was viewed by most observers - correctly, as it turned out - as noncompetitive.
