Biden sails to victory in SC’s first in the nation Democratic presidential primary

President Joe Biden easily won South Carolina’s Democratic Primary, which kicked off Democrats’ nominating process in the 2024 election cycle.

Biden was challenged by U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, and self-help author Marianne Williamson, but neither gained much, if any, traction in the state to make the primary truly competitive.

Phillips even publicly said he expected Biden to receive at least 95% of the vote in the state.

The Associated Press called Saturday’s primary election for Biden at 7:23 p.m.

“In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the Presidency,” Biden said in a statement. “Now in 2024, 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.”

The Democratic National Committee moved South Carolina to the lead off spot of the party’s presidential nominating contest order as a way give Black voters a greater say in the nominating process and highlight the party’s diversity.

Biden also wanted South Carolina to go first because he won the state in 2020 after losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

The primary election ultimately is a test of enthusiasm for the president among Black voters, a group that was a key part of his coalition that propelled him to the White House.

“The success I think that the Biden campaign will take from this is not the end result in terms of the numbers, but it’s the connections in the stories that the president, the vice president, the first lady, the second gentleman have heard, the connections that he then made with the people here in South Carolina,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison. “I believe that they’ve already won, just in terms of understanding what resonates on the campaign trail, in terms of the messages, but also what are people looking for in terms of the next four years.”

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Santee, told NPR he would watch for how Biden performed compared to New Hampshire’s primary. Because New Hampshire scheduled their primary before South Carolina against the DNC’s wishes, no delegates were awarded in the primary. Biden was not on the ballot, but still received 64% of the vote as a write-in candidate.

“I’m going to see how far we got beyond New Hampshire’s percentage,” Clyburn said. “I want to beat that since we do have a ballot.”

Turnout in the primary is being closely watched and Democrats.

Most top Democrats were careful not to set expectations for Biden or primary turnout ahead of Saturday’s results.

“What juices campaign numbers, right?” Harrison said. “It’s media dollars. It’s campaigning all around the state, it’s doing those things, but it’s also competition. People go to football games when they know it’s the number one team versus the number one team. Go to the Lady Gamecocks, you’ll see that when they play LSU, it is a packed house … But sometimes when that competition isn’t there, people think it’s going to be a blowout and they’re going to save their dollars and their time.”

Comparing the 2024 cycle to other cycles is difficult.

The last time a Democratic incumbent president ran for reelection was 2012 and the South Carolina Democratic Party canceled its primary. Interest in an incumbent party’s primary often wanes as most attention goes to the party out of the White House.

States such as Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Nevada had large drops in participation in Democratic nominating contests in 2012 when President Barack Obama ran for reelection.

Neither major party has held a presidential primary with an incumbent on the ballot since 1992 when President George Bush faced a challenge from Pat Buchanan.

But any of the 3.2 million registered voters who did not vote in Saturday’s primary are now eligible to vote in the Feb. 24 GOP presidential primary that features former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

After the race was called, the South Carolina Republican Party said people who had not voted in the Democratic Primary should vote on Feb. 24.

“We need a Republican back in the White House in order to reverse the tailspin Biden has put us in, and that’s exactly what we will do,” SC GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said in a statement. “I encourage all Republicans in the Palmetto State to turn out in record-breaking numbers to show Joe Biden just how excited we are to send him packing.”

South Carolina does not have voter registration by party, allowing Democratic and independent leaning voters to participate in the GOP primary. Even though it does happen from time to time, the amount is negligible to sway the outcome, McKissick has said.

Groups have spent money to convince independent and Democratic voters to crossover into Republican primary, including a mass text message sent by political action committee Primary Pivot that went out to those who voted in the Democratic primary in 2020.

“I think that to some degree has gotten some traction among folks,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright.

Harrison dismissed the efforts and said any efforts to convince Democratic voters to participate in the Republican Party to support Haley should be ignored pointing to Haley signing a 20-week abortion ban when she was governor without exceptions for rape or incest and declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

“We know Nikki Haley very, very well. And my message to Nikki, bless her heart, from the very start, is that we’re not going to vote for you, because you didn’t do anything for us,” Harrison said. “You didn’t do anything for us. So we’re not bailing you out. We got to MAGA apples in this field that’s left and both of them are rotten.”

The state Democratic Party and the Biden-Harris campaign focused heavily on turning out voters and reaching out to Black voters having the president, vice president, first lady or second gentleman in the state at least once every week during the month of January.

Biden spoke at Mother Emanuel AME Church, the site where nine Black churchgoers were killed by a white supremacist in 2015, and attended the SCDP’s First in the Nation Celebration Dinner.

Vice President Kamala Harris made three trips to the state in January all to court Black voters at the 7th Episcopal District AME Church Women’s Missionary Society annual retreat in Myrtle Beach and the annual King Day at the Dome at the South Carolina State House, and at a get-out-the-vote event Friday at S.C. State University, the state’s only four-year HBCU.

First Lady Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff also were dispatched to the state to speak in front of Black audiences.The state party also had outreach on college campuses to speak to young voters and a statewide tour with more than 115 events which included participation by Biden campaign surrogates and Phillips.

Before polls closed, Democrats were upbeat about turnout and enthusiasm from voters for the party and Biden. Party leaders pointed to early voting numbers where more than 51,000 people cast early votes or turned in absentee ballots in the two weeks leading up to the primary.

They also said their get out the vote events in January were often packed.

“What we’ve seen on the ground is a completely different narrative that is getting reported in the national press, and that is we’ve seen crowds,” said SCDP Executive Director Jay Parmley. “The crowds are different. The excitement is different.”

Previous S.C. Democratic Party presidential party turnout

• 2020: 540,062

• 2016: 373,063

• 2012: Primary canceled

• 2008: 532,151

Source: South Carolina Election Commission