South Carolina, the state that launched Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination four years ago, will hand the president his first official victory in the 2024 campaign primaries this Saturday (3), projects the CNN .
In a result that was widely expected, Biden will defeat his two closest challengers, Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, as he claims his first delegates in his quest to win his party's nomination again. There are 55 delegates at stake in the South Carolina primary.
This year marks the first time that South Carolina has appeared at the front of the official Democratic nomination calendar — a change made largely at Biden's insistence.
For decades, Iowa and New Hampshire have cast the early votes in Democratic presidential primary battles. But the Democratic National Committee decided to move those states off the calendar in the face of criticism that their mostly white electorates did not reflect a Democratic base that is much more diverse nationally.
Iowa Democratic officials accepted the changes, opting to hold a mail-in meeting with ballots mailed to voters starting Jan. 12 and postmarked by March 5 — Super Tuesday — when more than a dozen other states are scheduled to attend. to hold its primaries.
New Hampshire officials, citing a state law that requires its primary to be the first in the nation, backed off — holding a rogue Democratic contest alongside the Republican primary on Jan. 23.
However, the Democratic National Committee punished the Granite State by depriving it of delegates at the 2024 party convention. Because the state failed to meet the calendar set by the Committee, Biden did not register to appear on the state's primary ballot. But the president's supporters launched a successful write-in campaign on his behalf, which saw him win 64% of the vote.
Status
To cement South Carolina's status as the first primary in the 2024 Democratic race, Biden visited the Palmetto State twice last month, and Vice President Kamala Harris headlined a get-out-the-vote event at South Carolina State University , in Orangeburg, on Friday.
“You had my back, and I hope I had yours,” Biden said at Brookland Baptist Church in Columbia last weekend.
The president was not in South Carolina on Saturday because he was heading to a fundraising campaign through Southern California and Nevada. Before his departure, he made a stop at his re-election campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, making brief remarks looking ahead to the general election.
“This is not just a campaign. This is more of a mission. We cannot, we cannot, we cannot lose this campaign, for the good of the country,” Biden said.
“I want to say this from the bottom of my heart. It’s not about me,” he said. “It’s about the country. And I think everyone knows that and I think people are starting to notice.”
“The American people understand. They understand what’s going on,” Biden said, framing the dispute around protecting democracy.
With Biden facing little serious competition for the Democratic nomination, Saturday's primary was important for the president because it marked a return to the place that catapulted him to the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Biden limped into the South Carolina primary that year after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses, fourth in the New Hampshire caucuses and a distant second in the Nevada caucuses.
However, the Palmetto State's large black population — and a late endorsement from influential Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn — helped deliver Biden a commanding victory that, for the first time, demonstrated strength with a core Democratic electorate that no other primary candidate could. rival.
Days later, Biden came closer to securing the party's nomination by amassing a virtually insurmountable delegate lead across a wide swath of states on Super Tuesday.
South Carolina is dominated by Republicans in general elections. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.
But the push by Biden's campaign and his allies in South Carolina was part of a broader effort to shore up support among black voters, a bloc crucial to the president's re-election prospects, especially in battleground states like Georgia and the “blue wall” states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Democratic primary took place three weeks before the Republican vote on February 24. The Republican primary could be former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's last chance to slow former President Donald Trump's march to a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination.
But a recent Monmouth University-Washington Post poll showed her trailing Trump by 26 points in her home state's primary.
*CNN's Betsy Klein, Kevin Liptak, Terence Burlij and Ethan Cohen contributed
Source: CNN Brasil
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