President Biden won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, giving him the emphatic result he no doubt envisioned when he made the state the first contest on the Democratic presidential nominating calendar.
The election, announced by The Associated Press shortly after the polls closed, gives Mr. Biden the first set of delegates needed to claim the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in August.
Mr. Biden has promised that South Carolina will send him back to the White House.
“The people of South Carolina have spoken again, and I have no doubt that you have put us on the path to winning the presidency again — and making Donald Trump lose again,” the president said in a statement released by his campaign.
Mr. Biden won South Carolina Democrats overwhelmingly, more than 96 percent with 80 percent of the vote counted — dominating every county with more than 95 percent of the vote, including heavily black precincts .
His campaign wanted South Carolina to demonstrate that the party’s base — particularly black voters — remained committed to Mr. Biden and would turn out in large numbers. The state’s open primary system means voters are free to choose which primary to vote in, and the stakes are much higher in the Republican race, pitting Mr. Trump against Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina — and there has been some concern from party officials about voters waiting to participate in this contest on February 24.
Black voters are critical to Mr. Biden’s success in battleground states, but transferring South Carolina’s February to November results to polls in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia is a difficult proposition, given that his primary Saturday were seen by most observers — rightly so, as it turned out — as uncompetitive.
The primary had about 150,000 votes, on the low end of the primary projection of staying for Representative James E. Clyburn, Mr. Biden’s main surrogate in South Carolina, whose 2020 endorsement helped him clinch the nomination that year. The Biden campaign itself has studiously avoided making public predictions about how many Democrats would vote in Saturday’s primary.
There is little data to gauge Democratic turnout on Saturday.
The last time a Democratic incumbent sought re-election, in 2012, President Barack Obama went unchallenged in South Carolina — and the state did not hold a primary.
Four years later, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the state’s primary, 370,864 people voted. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary and 12 Democrats on the ballot, 536,949 people voted.
The South Carolina Democratic Party said early voting data showed the share of black voters in the electorate was 13 percent higher than in 2020, when people of color made up about half of voters in Democratic primaries and there were no Republican primaries. . by the voters.
In 2016, the last year in which both parties held a primary in South Carolina, voters of color made up two-thirds of Democratic primary voters.
Christale Spain, the chairwoman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, spearheaded much of the state party’s organizing drive. Late Saturday, she said she was “very encouraged” by the state’s early voting numbers, which showed more than 51,000 voters cast early Democratic primary ballots. He also added a warning about voters’ enthusiasm for Mr. Biden.
“We may not see that enthusiasm, but they are mission-driven,” he said of South Carolina Democrats. “They know this is a choice between progress and regression and freedom and against freedom.”
By moving South Carolina from the party’s fourth contest to its first, Mr. Biden increased the influence of black voters in choosing the Democratic nominee and isolated himself from potential primary challengers in a state that saved his 2020 campaign and pushed to the White House.
There wasn’t much drama on Saturday night. Within 30 minutes of the polls closing, the Associated Press called the primary for Mr. Biden, his campaign distributed his victory statement and a watch party hosted by the South Carolina Democratic Party in Columbia began winding down.
Unlike New Hampshire, where a challenger to Biden — Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota — spent millions on his campaign, the president had South Carolina virtually to himself. Voters in the state provided little support for Mr. Phillips and Marianne Williamson, the author who is also running a quixotic 2020 presidential campaign.
About 64 percent of New Hampshire Democratic voters wrote Mr. Biden’s name on the ballot, adding to evidence that the party’s base is behind him.
The Biden campaign has treated the South Carolina primary as an important contest, even though the Republican-leaning state is unlikely to be a general election battleground. The campaign hired four paid staffers in the state — devoting resources to an uncompetitive state before doing so in general election battlegrounds like Arizona and Pennsylvania. And the South Carolina Democratic Party has spent months trying to increase turnout to maintain its new spot on the primary calendar.
At a press conference after Mr. Biden’s race was announced, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison, a South Carolina native, said he was “extremely ecstatic” with the turnout.
Mr. Clyburn, who refrained in his speech on Saturday from any analysis of the turnout numbers that have been released so far, argued that Mr. Biden’s victory had implications beyond South Carolina.
“This is about keeping this country on its way to a more perfect union,” he said to applause.
At the end of the night, both Ms. Spain and Mr. Harrison expressed confidence that South Carolina would maintain its status as the first in the nation for Democrats.
“What is the state motto, ‘While I breathe I hope’?” said Mr. Harrison. “I’ll do my best to make sure.”
