Joe Biden wins Democrats’ South Carolina primary
Joe Biden has scored a convincing victory in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, ending progressive rival Bernie Sanders’ dream run.
Joe Biden is the big winner of the South Carolina Democrat primary, breathing life back into his presidential campaign.
Projections based on exit polls show an overwhelming victory for the former vice president on the back of strong support from the state’s African American voters.
“We are very much alive,” Biden declared at an exuberant post-election rally. “For all of you who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind — this is your campaign.”
Before the polls closed, Mr Biden declared his “full comeback starts in South Carolina and then goes here on Tuesday.
“I mean it. We’re going to win South Carolina, and the next step is North Carolina. We do enough, we’re going to win here as well and then it’s a straight path to the nomination for President of the United States of America.”
“The bigger the win, the bigger the bump.”
Bernie Sanders claimed second place, though his loss gave a momentary respite to anxious establishment Democrats who feared that the self-described democratic socialist would finish February with four consecutive top finishes. Billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who was in a battle for third place, formally suspended his campaign. He spent more than $19 million on television advertising in South Carolina — more than all of his rivals combined — but never found a clear lane in the crowded contest.
Seven candidates remain in the Democrats’ quest to find the strongest possible nominee to take on President Donald Trump in November.
Biden’s allies almost immediately cast the South Carolina victory as proof that he should stand as the clear alternative to Sanders.
More than half of the Democrat voters in South Carolina were African American and exit polls show Mr Biden received heavy support among those aged 45 years and older.
The victory will revive Mr Biden’s campaign after poor performances in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
But he faces his biggest test yet on the national level on Wednesday, Australian time, when 14 states go to the polls in the Super Tuesday primaries.
Senator Sanders is the clear frontrunner in the race but Mr Biden is seeking to become the leading moderate in the field to challenge him.
At present the moderate vote among Democrats is split between Mr Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and, from Wednesday, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who will contest the Super Tuesday primaries.
Standing in Mr Biden’s way, in addition to Mr Sanders, is former New York City Mayor Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest men, who has spent more than half a billion dollars courting voters in dozens of states yet to vote.
The South Carolina primary was the first major test of the candidates’ appeal among black voters. And while it gave the 77-year-old Mr Biden a win when he most needed it, he must still prove that he has the financial and organisational resources to dramatically expand his campaign in the next 72 hours. He will also be under pressure to rely on his decades-long relationships with party leaders to create a new sense of inevitability around his candidacy.
Even before news of Mr Biden’s win was declared, Mr Bloomberg announced his own plan to deliver a three-minute prime-time address Sunday night on two television networks. He didn’t say how much he paid for the air time, which is unprecedented in recent decades.
And Mr Sanders was already peeking ahead to Super Tuesday, betting he can amass an insurmountable delegate lead at that point. After two consecutive victories and a tie for the lead in Iowa, the 78-year-old Vermont senator’s confidence is surging.
Mr Sanders was spending the lead-up to Super Tuesday campaigning in the home states of two major Democratic rivals, betting he can score a double knockout blow - or at least limit the size of their victories.
In a power play, Mr Sanders hosted a midday rally Saturday in downtown Boston, campaigning in the heart of liberal ally Elizabeth Warren’s political turf. Addressing a crowd of thousands on the Boston Common, Mr Sanders said his success in the Democratic primary means “the establishment is getting very nervous” - but he never predicted victory in South Carolina.
On the eve of Super Tuesday, Sanders will host a concert in Minnesota, where home-state Sen. Amy Klobuchar is looking for her first win.
Senior adviser Jeff Weaver was among the staffers dispatched to California on Saturday. He said Mr Sanders was aggressively hunting for delegates, noting that their campaign’s experience during the 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton taught them that any candidate who finishes Super Tuesday with a significant delegate advantage will be difficult to catch.
“I’m confident we’re going to do very, very well across the country,” Weaver said of the coming four days. He also sought to downplay the importance of South Carolina, where “Biden is expected to win.”
“For the vice president, he needs an extraordinarily large win in South Carolina in order to convince folks he’s going to be able to go the distance,” he said.
Yet the Democrats’ 2020 primary election is far from a two-person race. In South Carolina, billionaire activist Tom Steyer has spent more than $19 million on television advertising - more than all the other candidates combined - in his quest for his first top finish in four contests. At his state campaign headquarters on Saturday, Mr Steyer said he felt optimistic going into the vote and was looking ahead to trips to Alabama and Texas, two Super Tuesday states. Not ceding anything, Pete Buttigieg is fighting to prove he can build a multiracial coalition. And with the help of super PACs, Ms Warren and Ms Klobuchar have vowed to keep pushing forward no matter how they finish on Saturday. Still, Saturday was all about Biden and whether he might convince anxious establishment Democrats rally behind him at last.
Elected officials inclined to embrace his moderate politics had been reluctant to support him after bad finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and a distant second place in Nevada last week. Yet fearing Mr Sanders’ polarising progressive priorities, they’re still searching for an alternative who’s viewed as a safer bet to defeat Donald Trump in November.
Senior Biden adviser Symone Sanders shifted away from calling South Carolina Biden’s “firewall” and instead called it a “springboard,” on par with how the state boosted the presidential aspirations of Barack Obama in 2008 and Clinton in 2016.
That sentiment was echoed by former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, who said a big Biden win in South Carolina could give him a Super Tuesday boost that might force several candidates to quickly consider whether to proceed, including Mr Bloomberg.
“If Biden wins by a big margin, it will translate into a bigger day for him on Tuesday,” Axelrod said. “And if he beats Bloomberg by a significant margin on Tuesday, Bloomberg is going to have to consider what he’s doing here.”
Indeed, South Carolina represents much more than the fourth state on the Democrats’ months-long primary calendar.
It serves as the first major test of the candidates’ strength with African American voters, who will be critical both in the general election and the rest of the primary season.
Roughly three in 10 people of voting age in South Carolina are black, according to census data.
There was evidence that Mr Biden’s status as former President Obama’s two-term vice president helped him win over African Americans.
About 4 in 10 voters in South Carolina wanted to return to the politics of the past, compared to about a third in Iowa and New Hampshire. That includes the roughly 50% of African American voters who said they want a Democratic presidential nominee who would emulate the Obama’s presidency, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of the electorate.
By comparison, roughly two-thirds of white voters wanted a presidential candidate who would bring fundamental change to Washington.
While voting technology was a concern in two of the last three primary contests, South Carolina uses a wide array of voting technology that presents unique challenges.
Saturday’s election in South Carolina marks the first statewide test of its new fleet of electronic voting machines, a $50 million upgrade from an old and vulnerable system that lacked any paper record of individual votes. The new machines produce a paper record that can be verified by the voter and checked after the election to detect any malfunction or manipulation.
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