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South Carolina, which propelled Joe Biden to the Democratic nomination four years ago, will give the president his first official primary victory of the 2024 race on Saturday, CNN predicts.
In a largely expected outcome, Mr. Biden once again claimed his party’s nomination and claimed first delegates, defeating his two closest challengers, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and author Marianne William. It will defeat Mr. Song.biden He won all 55 contested delegates in the South Carolina primary.
This is the first year that South Carolina appears at the front of the official Democratic nominating calendar, a change largely at the request of Mr. Biden.
Biden, who was in Los Angeles for a fundraiser on Saturday night when he was expected to win, said in a statement that South Carolina put him on the path to victory.
“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.” said. “Now, in 2024, the people of South Carolina have once again raised their voices. You are leading us on a path to winning the Presidency again and making Donald Trump a loser again. There is no doubt about that.”
DNC ranks South Carolina higher than Iowa and New Hampshire
For decades, Iowa and New Hampshire have cast the first votes in Democratic presidential primaries. But the Democratic National Committee decided to put those states back on the calendar in the face of criticism that states with majority white voters did not reflect the much more diverse Democratic base nationally.
Iowa Democratic Party officials accepted the change, and ballots will be mailed to voters starting Jan. 12 and must be postmarked by March 5, Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen other states have primaries scheduled. elected to hold a postal caucus meeting to take effect.
New Hampshire officials pushed back against holding a fraudulent Democratic campaign on January 23 alongside the Republican primary, citing a state law that requires the primary to be the first in the nation. .
But the Democratic National Committee punished the Granite State, stripping it of delegates to the 2024 convention. Biden did not apply to participate in the state’s primary vote because the state did not follow the timeline set by the DNC. However, the president’s supporters launched a write-in campaign on his behalf, which was successful with him receiving 64% of the vote.
To cement South Carolina’s status as the first primary of the 2024 Democratic election, Biden visited the Palmetto State twice last month, and on Friday Vice President Kamala Harris visited the South Carolina state in Orangeburg. He headlined a voting event at the university.
“You’ve got my back, and I hope you’ll have my back,” Biden told a Sunday lunch crowd at Brookland Baptist Church in Columbia over the weekend. Ta.
The president was not in South Carolina on Saturday, heading to fundraisers in Southern California and Nevada. Before departing, he stopped by the re-election headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, and gave a short speech in preparation for the general election.
“This is more than just a campaign. This is more of a mission. In the national interest, we cannot afford to lose this race, we cannot afford to lose,” Biden said.
“I think that from the bottom of my heart. It’s not about me,” he said. “It’s a country thing. And I think everyone knows that, and I think people are starting to realize that too.”
“The American people get it. They understand what’s going on,” Biden said, building his campaign around protecting democracy.
Although Biden faces little serious competition for the Democratic nomination, Saturday’s primary was nonetheless important for the president. That’s because it marks a return to the place that made Biden the Democratic nominee in 2020.
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. But the Palmetto State’s large black population, along with the late support of influential Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, led to a landslide victory for Biden, with other major candidates competing. This proved for the first time that the Democratic Party is strong in core constituencies where it cannot.
Days later, Biden took a virtually insurmountable algebraic lead in a wide swath of diverse states on Super Tuesday, moving him closer to clinching the party’s nomination.
South Carolina has a Republican majority in the general election. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state was Jimmy Carter in 1976.
But the push by the Biden campaign and its allies in South Carolina is likely to strengthen support among black voters, particularly in battleground states such as Georgia and “blue wall” states, which are crucial to the president’s re-election prospects. It was part of the initiative. in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The Democratic primary was held three weeks before Republicans cast their votes on February 24th. The Republican primary could be former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s last chance to slow former President Donald Trump’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive year. But a recent Monmouth University/Washington Post poll found her leading Trump by 26 points in her home state’s primary.
This article and heading have been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Betsy Klein, Kevin Liptak, Terence Burlij and Ethan Cohen contributed to this report.
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