Biden wins South Carolina primary, NBC News projects

Joe Biden has easily won the South Carolina primary, NBC News projects — giving his campaign a dose of energy amid recent polls that show he is in a tight race with Donald Trump, his likely opponent in November.

Biden, who will win all 55 of the state’s delegates, NBC News projects, defeated a comparatively weak field, including Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and author Marianne Williamson, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020. With 60% of the expected vote counted, Biden had won 96%. Williamson took 2% and Phillips 2%.

In a statement about a half hour after the race was called, Biden said: “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.”

Phillips tried to make light of the thumping.

“Congratulations, Mr. President, on a good old fashioned whooping,” he wrote on X. “See you in Michigan.”

Biden entered the South Carolina contest as the overwhelming front-runner.

Apart from the fundraising advantages that flow from incumbency, he was the favorite of South Carolina’s Democratic establishment, notably James Clyburn, a power in Congress and a leader in the Black community.

The South Carolina primary was Biden’s first appearance on the ballot in his bid for another four-year term. He won the New Hampshire primary last month as a write-in candidate, but that result was largely symbolic. Democratic officials are unlikely to count delegates from New Hampshire because the state defied the party and jumped to the front of the official primary calendar. Biden did not campaign in New Hampshire, a gesture meant to honor South Carolina’s official first-in-the-nation status.

Biden had wanted to win South Carolina by a whopping margin to show strength and counter perceptions that his candidacy is struggling. He made repeated visits to South Carolina in the run-up to the election, including a stop last month at the church in Charleston where a white supremacist murdered nine worshippers in 2015.

Black voters account for a majority of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate. In campaign speeches, Biden highlighted his efforts to improve their lives, mentioning his administration’s aid to historically Black colleges and programs to erase student loan debt.

He scarcely mentioned his primary opponents, focusing instead on Trump.

He stuck to the script after winning South Carolina.

“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 in his statement Saturday. “We cannot let that happen.”

Gratitude between the president and South Carolina ran both ways. Biden’s 2020 campaign was on the verge of unraveling ahead of South Carolina’s primary that February. He had lost badly in the two preceding contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Buoyed by Clyburn’s endorsement, he won the primary, regained momentum and began his march to the nomination.

South Carolinians, in turn, may have felt they owed Biden for using his clout as party leader to let the state hold the nation’s first official contest.

Historically, Iowa and New Hampshire had gone first and second, respectively. But the Democratic National Committee voted last year to vault South Carolina to the front of the pack, citing the state’s racial diversity as opposed to Iowa and New Hampshire’s more predominately white voting population.

Reluctant to cede its pole position, New Hampshire held a contest last month all the same. Biden was not on the ballot and did not campaign in the state, but he won nonetheless in a write-in vote.

A total of 55 delegates were at stake Saturday in South Carolina. The delegates will be awarded proportionally based on the outcome. A candidate needs a total of nearly 2,000 delegates to capture the Democratic nomination.

Sinclair Hightower, 72, a South Carolina Democratic voter interviewed Saturday before the polls closed, praised Biden’s performance in office.

“He’s tried hard to make the country better and I trust him, and he’s dependable and he’s a good president,” Hightower said. “He doesn’t make a lot of noise, he’s just doing his job.”

Still, not all South Carolina Democrats were sold on Biden’s candidacy. His support for Israel in its war with Hamas has emerged as a new vulnerability in his re-election bid. Some younger voters, in particular, fault Biden for sending aid to Israel as its military pounds Gaza, killing thousands of civilians.

“He’s given us a reason not to vote for him,” said Tierra Albert, 19, a student at Claflin University, a historically Black school in Orangeburg.

Given Biden’s front-runner status, the more intriguing drama in South Carolina happens on Feb. 24 when Trump and Nikki Haley square off in the state’s GOP primary. Under South Carolina’s open primary system, Democrats are free to vote in the Republican primary (they are barred from voting in both, however).

That dynamic has fueled speculation that some Democrats might cross over and vote in the Republican primary for the singular purpose of helping Haley — a former South Carolina governor — and slowing Trump’s march to the nomination.

Yet there are crosscutting pressures at work. South Carolina Democrats wanted a huge turnout to justify the party’s decision to bump the state to the front of the line. Anything short of that would re-open the debate about which state should go first in 2028 and thereafter.

As he cast an early vote last month in the state’s primary, Clyburn told election workers that he hoped they were busy throughout the day, meaning that Democratic voters would show up in force for Biden.

Afterward, he held a news conference and NBC News asked about the possibility that Democrats might sit out the Democratic primary and instead cast votes for Haley in the upcoming GOP contest.

“I hear about it a lot,” he said of that strategic ploy. “I’ve never endorsed it, and I don’t think it ever works.”