The projections indicate that Biden received more than 90% of the votes.
The US president, Joe Biden, secured a decisive win in the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday, the first state to officially start the process of nominating him as the party’s candidate for the November elections.
Based on the projections of various media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, Biden received more than 90% of the votes, compared to less than 10% of his only two competitors on the ballot: Representative Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson, both with low chances of success.
The US president said on Saturday that South Carolina had put him “on the path” to win the Presidency again and defeat former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) once more. “Now, in 2024, the people of South Carolina have reset the race and I have no doubt that they have put us on the path to winning the Presidency again and making Donald Trump a loser again,” Biden said.
Biden’s large margin over his rivals led the media companies, equipped with technology to estimate electoral results, to announce their projections about 25 minutes after the polls closed at 7:00 p.m. local time (00:00 GMT on Sunday).
With the victory confirmed, Biden’s real challenge in this event was to show his ability to mobilize the party’s base, especially the African-American community, which makes up 60% of the Democratic voters in South Carolina.
The best way to measure the enthusiasm for Biden would be through the turnout results, which will be released at the end of the count.
Biden was not in South Carolina on Saturday to celebrate the win. However, in the past month he visited three churches in the state’s African-American community and his campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on radio and television ads to reach these voters.
The significance of South Carolina lies in the fact that it officially inaugurates the Democratic race ahead of the November elections, being the first time that Biden faces the voters in person since his victory over former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) in the 2020 elections.
Despite its symbolic power, South Carolina will only award 55 delegates of the nearly 2,000 that Biden needs to officially become the Democratic candidate for the November elections, where he could face Trump again, the favorite to be the Republican candidate.
The Republican primaries, where Trump will run against former US ambassador to the UN and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, are scheduled for February 24. Despite the Democratic Party’s investment in South Carolina, this state is not in play in the November elections, as it is considered a conservative stronghold that has not voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, with Jimmy Carter (1977- 1981).
