[UPDATED, 2/4/24] President Joe Biden cruised to a crushing win Saturday in the first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina by taking more than 96% of votes in the statewide election.
The Associated Press named Biden the projected winner about 30 minutes after polls closed at 7 p.m. With 100% of votes counted, Biden nabbed a whopping 96.2% of the votes — 126,321 of ballots cast, according to the S.C. Election Commission’s unofficial results. The other two candidates on the ballot, Washington, D.C. author Marianne Williamson and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, got 2.1% and 1.7% respectively. Biden won all of the state’s 55 delegates to the Democratic Party’s national convention, the AP reported.
In a Saturday night statement, Biden looked back to 2020 when he said his presidential campaign was for people who had been knocked down, counted out and left behind.
“”That is still true today. With more than 14 million new jobs and a record 24 straight months — two years — of the unemployment rate under 4%, including a record low unemployment rate for Black Americans, we are leaving no one behind.”
Biden noted how South Carolina voters breathed life into his 2020 campaign when he got 48.7% of the 539,263 votes cast. That was two-and-a-half times the number of the next-closest challenger, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, who got 19.8% of the votes. Four other active candidates split the rest of the 2020 vote.
“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.”
Charleston County Democratic Party Chairman Sam Skardon said voter turnout, which was 4.1% of the state’s 3.2 million registered voters, was down from the past. But he said that was expected since Biden is an incumbent president seeking reelection without serious opposition.
“Still, President Biden’s historic margin shows South Carolina Democrats are excited about his reelection and unified in support of it,” Skardon said. “It was an honor to be the first state on his path back to the White House in 2024.
People versus extremism
On Friday at a get-out-the-vote rally at S.C. State University in Orangeburg, Vice President Kamala Harris described the differences between the two campaigns saying she and Biden were fighting for people, while Trump was putting himself and extremism first.
“We face a choice, cruelty or compassion, chaos or competence, division or unity, each of us has the power to answer these questions on a daily basis, and South Carolina tomorrow at the ballot box,” Harris said.
In his Saturday night statement, Biden offered a similar message, noting the stakes in 2024 were incredibly high for the country.
“There are extreme and dangerous voices at work in the country — led by Donald Trump — who are determined to divide our nation and take us backward,” Biden said. “We cannot let that happen. We’ve come a long way these past four years — with America now having the strongest economy in the world and among the lowest inflation of any major economy. Let’s keep pushing forward. Let’s finish what we started — together.”
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