Hillary Clinton scored an overwhelming victory Saturday in South Carolina and achieved redemption for the 2008 defeat that hobbled her first campaign for the White House, as minority voters who abandoned her eight years ago returned to her camp in force.
Her victory over Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the first Democratic primary in the South — and the first where black voters are the dominant factor in the electorate — is a good omen for her campaign as the race hurtles to Georgia and 10 other states that hold votes Tuesday.
More than half of South Carolina’s Democratic voting base is black, similar to the voter blocs in Georgia and other Southern states that cast ballots in the SEC primary. Her victory, called by the networks and The Associated Press seconds after polls closed, was a show of force in the South. She notched about three-quarters of the vote in an utter rout of Sanders.
“When we stand together there is no barrier too big to break,” she said at her campaign party in a Columbia arena. “And tomorrow this campaign goes national. We are going to compete for every vote in every state. And we’re not taking anything or anyone for granted.”
Sanders struggled to connect with black voters in South Carolina in the days before the vote, and he left the state on Saturday in search of friendlier terrain. He instead held rallies in Texas and Minnesota, both which hold votes Tuesday, in a clear signal he was conceding South Carolina to focus on states he could win.
“We won a decisive victory in New Hampshire. She won a decisive victory in South Carolina,” he said in a statement. “Now it’s on to Super Tuesday. In just three days, Democrats in 11 states will pick 10 times more pledged delegates on one day than were selected in the four early states so far in this campaign.”
It was an especially sweet victory for Clinton, whose nearly 30-point loss in South Carolina to Barack Obama in 2008 paved the way for his eventual nomination. Influential minority leaders ditched Clinton for Obama, and he swept Georgia and other Southern states with powerful black voting bases.
That 2008 contest got heated after former President Bill Clinton criticized Obama’s stance on the Iraq war and appeared to question his legitimacy as a presidential candidate. But throngs of voters Saturday returned to the Clinton fold thanks partly to an expansive get-out-the-vote effort her campaign built over almost a year.
That operation helped win over U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, the state's most influential Democrat, who endorsed her last week despite a public clash with Bill Clinton eight years ago. And it helped drive thousands of voters to events across the state featuring the husband-and-wife duo.
"All we need is to join hands around the best change-maker I've ever known," the ex-president said at a Friday night rally in downtown Columbia. "You can change the future of America by voting for Hillary."
Clinton has more aggressively embraced Obama’s agenda as Sanders drew closer in national polls. She casts herself as the biggest defender of his policies and pitted Sanders, with his Medicare for All and tuition-free public college education plans, as a threat to the president’s biggest achievements.
“I don’t think President Obama gets the credit he deserves,” she said to roars of applause in rallies Friday in Atlanta and South Carolina.
Some voters were split over Sanders’ call for a political “revolution” and Clinton’s ties to the region. Bertrand Brown, a security officer, headed to the polls without making up his mind.
“Hillary is talking about voting rights. Bernie is talking about education. And I’m torn over both,” he said. “The election this year, I’m just not too wild about. Don’t get me wrong — the debates are hilarious. But I just can’t get into it.”
Others had no doubt about the night’s outcome.
“This is exactly what we were expecting,” said Breon Walker, an attorney. “She should be the president. She’s the most qualified and the most experienced. And tonight, we delivered for her.”
Early exit polls showed that black voters made up about 60 percent of Democratic primary voters, and Clinton’s back-to-back wins in Nevada and South Carolina — both states with diverse populations — showed she’s consolidating support among minorities.
Exit polls showed that black voters accounted for about 62 percent of the state's primary voters, and that Clinton won a whopping score of 84 percent of their votes. Almost nine in 10 black voters said they trusted her to handle race relations.
Yet the exit polls also betrayed a lingering weak spot in her campaign. Sanders still got the bulk of white voters, who made up about two-thirds of his support. While Clinton and Sanders split white moderates, he trounced her among white voters who described themselves as liberal or very liberal.
Clinton’s victory gives her a clear advantage in the fight for delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Before the contest, the two had roughly an even number of delegates, though Clinton had a commanding lead in the contest for party insiders known as “superdelegates.” There were 53 delegates up for grabs in South Carolina, and she was set to lock up most of them.
In her victory speech, she cast her eye ahead to a November matchup with a nod to Republican front-runner Donald Trump's campaign mantra. Trump won the South Carolina GOP primary last week and is ahead in polls in Georgia and most other Super Tuesday states.
“We don’t need to make America great again — America’s never stopped being great,” she said. “But we do need to make America whole again.”
The path ahead for Sanders is now more complicated, and his defeat in South Carolina does not bode well for his performance in other Southern states. The progressive message that fueled him to a tight second-place finish in Iowa and a commanding victory in New Hampshire has so far failed to resonate with more diverse electorates.
“What the Sanders campaign has been able to do here has been amazing, but a lot of the Southern states are similarly situated,” said Jaime Harrison, the chairman of South Carolina’s Democratic Party. “And how you get more African-Americans to support him is a challenge. The Clintons have been a brand here for so long.”
But more than half the delegates needed to secure the nomination hang in the balance in March, and he is competing in smaller states including Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont in hopes of scoring some wins Tuesday.
“Let me be clear on one thing tonight: This campaign is just beginning,” Sanders said.
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