Hillary Clinton Wins South Carolina Primary

Hillary Clinton addressed supporters Saturday after being projected to win by a large margin

Drawing overwhelming support from the African-American voters who deserted her here eight years ago, Hillary Clinton won her first resounding victory of the 2016 campaign in South Carolina on Saturday, delivering a blow to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont as their fight turns to the 11 states where Democrats vote on Tuesday.

After supporting Barack Obama in 2008, African-American voters, who will be the dominant force in the coming Southern primaries, turned out in droves for Mrs. Clinton here. They supported her over Mr. Sanders by more than 6-to-1, and white voters narrowly favored her as well, according to exit polling.

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Mrs. Clinton assiduously cultivated the support of black voters, not least by showing her devotion to President Obama and by promising to build on his legacy. She capped off months of campaigning here with stops on Friday at a popular soul food restaurant and bakery in Charleston and a rally at a historically black college in Orangeburg, alongside black surrogates including the television personality Star Jones and the state’s longtime representative, James E. Clyburn.
“I don’t think President Obama gets the credit he deserves for digging us out of the ditch Republicans put us in,” Mrs. Clinton said, a line she often used in South Carolina, where Mr. Obama defeated her by 29 points in 2008.

This time it was Mrs. Clinton who emerged from the first southern primary with a clearer path to the nomination. With early exit polls showing Mrs. Clinton winning by more than 35 percentage points, The Associated Press called the primary for her shortly after polls closed at 7 p.m. State officials projected that turnout was modest compared to the 532,000 ballots cast in the Clinton-Obama primary race here in 2008, and well below the record 743,000 votes cast in South Carolina’s Republican primary last Saturday, which Donald J. Trump won.

The rout was both politically and psychologically meaningful for Mrs. Clinton after she barely defeated Mr. Sanders in Iowa, lost to him by 21 percentage points in New Hampshire, and eked out a 5.5 percentage point victory last week in Nevada.
Beyond delivering momentum, the win also extends Mrs. Clinton’s lead over Mr. Sanders in delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination; the exact allocation of South Carolina’s 53 delegates will be known once all the votes are counted.

The results also helped Mrs. Clinton extinguish any doubts among Democrats about her ability to appeal to black voters, with black women, in particular, enthusiastically backing her candidacy in South Carolina and in the Nevada caucuses last week.


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That reservoir of support will serve as the biggest roadblock to Mr. Sanders’s chances for a surge in the weeks ahead. Clinton advisers believe she will trounce Mr. Sanders in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia, which have contests on Tuesday, and, in doing so, move even further ahead of him to capture the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.

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Under party rules, most delegates are awarded proportionally to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders based on their shares of the vote in congressional districts. The most Democratic-leaning districts are accorded the most delegates; in many places these are majority black and Hispanic districts, and Mrs. Clinton is far more popular with those voters than is Mr. Sanders.

“Support from African-Americans is going to be the key for Secretary Clinton across the South, and South Carolina is a good indication of that,” said former Gov. Richard Riley, who was the secretary of education under President Bill Clinton and is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton. “She has supported President Obama in a very serious way, and worked all out for him as secretary of state, and that matters a lot to many Democratic voters.”

Moments after the polls here closed, Mrs. Clinton expressed her gratitude on Twitter, writing, “To South Carolina, to the volunteers at the heart of our campaign, to the supporters who power it: thank you.”
Mr. Sanders, who was campaigning on Saturday in Texas and Minnesota, which will vote on March 1, also quickly put out a statement thanking supporters.

“Let me be clear on one thing tonight: This campaign is just beginning,” Mr. Sanders said. “Our grass-roots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won’t stop now.”
As if already looking past South Carolina, which had for months heavily favored Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Sanders addressed big crowds at two rallies in Texas on Saturday. His aides believe Mrs. Clinton remains vulnerable and that Mr. Sanders will pick up delegates on March, 1, known as Super Tuesday, when states including Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, and his home state of Vermont will hold nominating contests.

Mrs. Clinton edged ahead of Mr. Sanders among white voters, although he prevailed with white men, according to exit polls by Edison Research. Mrs. Clinton lost among white voters in the last two states, New Hampshire and Nevada, but South Carolina allies like former Gov. Jim Hodges had said they were confident that her message about creating economic opportunities would appeal to white voters even though it was often targeted to black voters.

In interviews last week, several white Democrats said they did not trust Mrs. Clinton, chiefly because of her use of a private email account and the American deaths in Benghazi, Libya, when she was secretary of state. While exit polls showed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders running evenly among voters who valued honesty and trustworthiness more than any other candidate qualities, some Clinton allies are deeply concerned that she could struggle with white voters, particularly white men, in the general election, and Republicans like Mr. Trump have made clear that they intend to sweep white Americans.

The senator had tried to make inroads among African-American voters, including highlighting a grainy black-and-white photo published in The Chicago Tribune that showed a young Mr. Sanders being arrested in Chicago in 1963 while protesting segregation.