COLUMBIA, South Carolina — President Joe Biden cheered his cakewalk victory in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary Saturday night, thanking Palmetto State voters for once again setting “us on the path to winning the presidency” and taking a pointed shot at former President Donald Trump, his likely November opponent.
The polls closed at 7 p.m. in the first 2024 primary sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. The Associated Press called the victory for Biden at 7:23 p.m. in a sign of his dominance over challengers, author Marianne Williamson and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN). With about 95% of the results in, Biden held a commanding lead with 96% of the vote, compared to 2% for Williamson and 1.7% for Phillips.
“In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the presidency,” the president wrote in a statement after his victory was finalized. “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.”
Biden pointed back to the promise he made to South Carolina, and black voters in particular, following his 2020 campaign: “When I was elected president, I said the days of the backbone of the Democratic Party being at the back of the line were over.
“The stakes in this election could not be higher,” the president concluded. “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. 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.”
Biden saw particularly strong early voting support from black voters, something the campaign had hoped to secure to push back on the idea that Biden’s support from minority voters had slipped across his more than three years in office. Black voters turned out in especially high numbers during South Carolina’s early voting period, accounting for 76.5% of all votes cast during the two weeks leading up to Saturday’s election.
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South Carolina almost certainly will vote Republican in November, and Biden opted not to travel to Columbia for the state party’s primary night celebration.
While he spent the week in Michigan, Florida, Washington D.C., and Delaware before heading off to the West Coast for the weekend, Biden took some time to call into four South Carolina radio stations this week, saying he kept his promises to black voters and pledging he would not take their support for granted.
