Biden won the votes of all 55 Democratic delegates in the state (French)

US President Joe Biden achieved an expected victory in the Democratic Party primary elections in South Carolina yesterday, Saturday, easily passing his first electoral test in his quest to win a second presidential term.

Biden defeated his other Democratic rivals who had a long chance on the ballot in South Carolina, including Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips and writer Marianne Williamson.

Biden's re-election campaign invested heavily in increasing turnout, in what it saw as a test of its efforts to mobilize black voters, a major Democratic bloc pivotal to Biden's chances in a potential rematch in the US presidential elections scheduled for next November against his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

Camilla Harris, Biden's deputy, speaks at South Carolina State University during an election event (Anatolia)

The path to victory

Biden addressed voters in the state in a statement, saying, “In 2020, it was South Carolina voters who proved the critics wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and put us on the path to winning the presidency. Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again, not "I have no doubt that it has put us on the path to winning the presidency again, and making Donald Trump a loser again."

Biden won the votes of all 55 Democratic delegates in the state. This is the result of the efforts of Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison to make South Carolina occupy first place in the party's primaries.

Harrison noted that the state's population is more ethnically diverse compared to the two traditional states that ranked first in the country, Iowa and New Hampshire, with an overwhelming white majority.

South Carolina is viewed as reliably Republican, but 26% of its population is black. In the 2020 general election, black voters made up 11% of the electorate, and 9 out of 10 of them supported Biden, according to the results of an extensive poll of voters in that election.

South Carolina, where Biden has deep ties to longtime supporters and donors, also played a pivotal role in his 2020 campaign, where a big win revived flagging efforts in other early-voting states and propelled him to the nomination.

Biden got help from longtime South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, whose 2020 endorsement was a long-awaited signal to black voters in the state that Biden would be the right candidate to defend their interests.

Clyburn remains a close ally of Biden, and said last night that he believes New Hampshire delegates should be seated at the party's convention this summer, and that Democrats should avoid any further infighting.

Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black and Asian American woman to hold the position, have repeatedly thanked South Carolina Democrats for their support.

Biden had called a series of black radio stations in South Carolina, and told one of them, “The only reason I am speaking to you today as president of the United States is because of South Carolina. This is a fact, not an exaggeration.”


During his election campaign in the state last week, Biden said that the state of South Carolina She is "the reason Donald Trump lost. You are the reason we will win and defeat him again."

Black voters interviewed during the recent early voting period cited a range of reasons to support Biden, ranging from his administration's defense of abortion rights to the appointment of black and other minority advocates to the federal government.

Source: Agencies