Joe Biden scored a big win in the South Carolina Democratic primary

Joe Biden this Saturday got a resounding victory in the Democratic primaries of South Carolina, in an appointment that marked the beginning of the party’s run in the November elections and which is particularly important for assessing the level of enthusiasm of the African-American community.

With half of the ballots counted, Biden achieved victory in South Carolina, taking 96.4% of the votes and leaving behind his two main rivals: self-help author Marianne Williamson (2%) and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips (1.6%).

With these results, Biden would obtain the 55 delegates allocated by South Carolina, although this would still be a small number compared to the almost 2,000 delegates he needs to officially declare himself the Democratic candidate in the November elections, where could face former President Donald Trump again (2017-2021), favored to be the Republican candidate.

“In 2020, it was South Carolina voters who proved the experts wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and put us on the path to winning the presidency,” Biden said in a statement.

Additionally, he indicated, “Now, in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that they have put us on the path to winning the presidency again and make Donald Trump lose again”.

South Carolina, where Biden has long maintained deep relationships with supporters and donors, also played a critical role in his 2020 campaign, where a big victory helped revive a weakened effort in other early voting states and made him pushed towards the nomination race.

Both the current president of the United States and Vice President Kamala Harris have consistently thanked the state’s Democrats for their support. A week ago, Biden told attendees at a state party fundraiser that they were “the reason” she is president.

Despite the Democratic Party’s investment in South Carolina, this state does not participate in the November elections, as it is considered a conservative bastion that has not voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, with Jimmy Carter (1977-1981).

That of the state located in the southeast of the North American country was the first date of the Democratic race because last year, on Biden’s initiative, the party changed the primary calendar, snatching from Iowa and New Hampshire the first positions they had occupied since 1972, and granting that honor to the southern state.

This change had two goals: to reaffirm Biden’s loyalty to the state that had revived his candidacy in 2020 after poor results in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as to include more diverse voices in the primary process, such as those of the African American community, which is crucial in South Carolina, and the Hispanic, who will be the protagonist of the Nevada primaries on Tuesday.

The Republican primaries, in which Trump will compete against former US ambassador to the UN and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, are scheduled for February 24.