COLUMBIA, S.C.—Hillary Clinton won a decisive victory Saturday in the South Carolina Democratic primary — a win that should propel her on a path to the presidential nomination that eluded her in 2008.
COLUMBIA, S.C.—Hillary Clinton won a decisive victory Saturday in the South Carolina Democratic primary — a win that should propel her on a path to the presidential nomination that eluded her in 2008.
Polls and delegate math are working in the former secretary of state’s favor.
Clinton leads U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent seeking the Democratic nomination, in all but two of 20 primaries and caucuses with polling through March 15, when half of all Democratic delegates will be awarded.
Several news organizations said Clinton won the primary immediately after polls closed at 7 p.m. EDT.
The South Carolina win is Clinton’s third in the first four primary contests. Her only loss came in New Hampshire, which borders Sanders’ home state of Vermont.
Clinton, the first woman to win a presidential primary in South Carolina, dominated the state’s pre-primary polls, helped by her support among African-American voters, who account for more than half of the state’s Democratic voters. She held nearly a 3-to-1 lead with black voters, despite Sanders’ focus on African-American pastors, college students and lawmakers.
Exit polls by CNN and MSNBC found African-American voter turnout surpassed 2008, which was 55 percent. South Carolina was the first state of the 2016 primary season with a significant African-American population.
Many of the early March primaries are held in states with large blocs of African-American voters. Sanders is polling ahead of Clinton only in Vermont, his home state, and Massachusetts, which borders Vermont.
Sanders will need to show he can win states with more diversity than New Hampshire and Iowa, where he ran a close second Clinton, said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, an Democrat who is an unpledged superdelegate to the party’s convention.
Sanders was outmatched in South Carolina, where being a self-proclaimed democratic socialist failed to win over voters in the centrist state. His pledge to fix a rigged economic system and to provide free college were met more with skepticism than enthusiasm.
The Sanders campaign knew it was going to lose South Carolina.
With an insurmountable deficit, Sanders spent much less time than Clinton in South Carolina last week. He campaigned Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday in Midwestern states that hold primaries next month, including some that have primaries Tuesday.
Sanders came back to South Carolina Friday, but he flew out again Saturday to campaign in Texas and Minnesota, where he held a rally as polls closed in South Carolina.