2020 South Carolina Democratic Primary Results

Joe Biden won by a huge margin on Saturday. Like Sanders in Nevada, Biden carried nearly every demographic group including men, women, strong liberals, somewhat liberals, moderates, non-white voters, black voters, hispanic voters, 30-45 years olds, 45-65 year olds, educated voters, non-educated voters, union members, and non-union members. He got second place to Sanders with voters under 30.

His huge margins with African American voters allowed Biden to have such a decisive victory just as the hispanic population did for Sanders in Nevada. This shows that support from African Americans varies by region with Biden having much stronger numbers in the South than elsewhere. Unlike Nevada, South Carolina is not demographically representative of the Democratic party as a whole, however Biden doing so strongly, there suggests that he may fare well in southern states on Super Tuesday, which could prevent Sanders from claiming an outright victory on Tuesday.

Biden’s larger-than-expected win likely stemmed from a variety of factors including valuable endorsements, a strong debate performance, and his second place finish in Nevada. After this strong showing, the party establishment is starting to embrace Biden as the main Sanders alternative, which should provide a much needed financial boost to Biden. He has won numerous endorsements from influential party figures during the past few days including many sitting and former senators and governors. This was Biden’s first primary win ever (on his third presidential run). This win also put Biden ahead in the popular vote and nearly caught up to Sanders’ total delegate haul, though both of those stats will be overshadowed by Super Tuesday. 

It was a pretty bad night for Sanders. His chances of winning the nomination outright dropped in the last week from close to 50% to less than 20%, including over a 10% drop following South Carolina. This does not mean that anyone else is likely to win though. There is now a 70% chance of no one getting a majority of delegates, which would result in a contested convention. Sanders is still the front runner of the race and will be formidable to compete against on Super Tuesday. Biden is not far behind though and he has now been able to consolidate the moderate wing of the party raising his chances. Sanders raised more than 46 million dollars in February alone, a record for 2020. He was the number one fundraiser in 2019 and “only” raised 100 million during the whole year. His next closest competitor, Warren, was more than 17 million dollars behind him in February and he has more cash on hand than her as well. 

If Saturday was bad for Sanders, it was catastrophic for everyone else. In fact, three of the seven competitors in South Carolina quit following the results. None of the others received any delegates and only Tom Steyer got in the double digits. After investing around 200 million dollars into his campaign, the California billionaire quit the race after falling short of his expectations in what was a must-win state for him. He was polling low enough elsewhere that his dropping out is unlikely to impact the race much. 

Pete Buttigieg, who became the first gay candidate to win in a major party primary dropped out after garnering just 8% of the vote in South Carolina, despite investing significant resources there. He was unable to connect with black and hispanic voters and due to that, his campaign lost traction once the two mostly white states had voted. His dropping out of the race raised the chance of no one winning without helping any specific candidate (which hurts Sanders the most). This is because his supporters are likely to spread out between campaigns, which means the delegate totals will be more split up as more candidates will reach the 15% margin. 

Klobuchar announced that she is ending her presidential run on Monday. While she was a candidate that looked good on paper, she failed to win over the contested moderate lane from Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg. Her strongest finish of third place in New Hampshire did not translate to success in other states and like Buttigieg, she was not able to resonate with minority voters. She and Buttigieg are both expected to endorse Biden. Her dropping out increased the possibility of no one winning a majority, which disproportionately hurt Sanders. 

Warren has announced her intention to stay in the race despite doing worse than both Buttigieg and Steyer. She is holding out in hope of being a compromise candidate in a contested convention, as she is to the right of Sanders and the left of Biden and Bloomberg. Warren is also doing well financially after raising 29 million dollars in February, second only to Sanders, which should help her stay in for the long run.

While he was not on the ballot, Saturday was also a bad day for Bloomberg as it propelled Biden into the position of being the main Sanders alternative, a spot Bloomberg had been hoping to take.  

It is notable that what started as the most diverse field ever has narrowed itself down to the point where every competitive candidate still in contention is white and over 70, with three out of the four candidates white men who are over 77 years old. Interestingly, two of the top four candidates are Jewish including the front runner, which is unprecedented in American history. 

Tomorrow may be the single most important day of the race with 1,354 delegates available and 14 states voting. 

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Aaron Lyubansky

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