U.S. President Joe Biden delivered remarks on the U.S. economy and his administration’s efforts to revive American manufacturing during his visit to Flex LTD, a factory producing solar energy microinverters, in West Columbia, South Carolina, on July 6, 2023.
NBC News projects that President Joe Biden has won the South Carolina Democratic primary. As of 9:00 p.m. ET, with 60% of votes counted, Biden led with an impressive 96% of the vote. The other two Democrats in the race, House Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and self-help author and 2020 Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson, were each winning around 2% of the ballots.
Phillips, acknowledging Biden’s victory, wrote on X as the vote results came in, “Congratulations, Mr. President, on a good old-fashioned whooping.” Biden likened his triumph to his 2020 primary win, attributing it to the voters of South Carolina who played a crucial role in setting him on the path to winning the Presidency.
Joe Biden (Credits: CNBC)
“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,” Biden said in a statement following the results. “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.”
NBC News projected that Biden would be awarded all 55 Democratic delegates in South Carolina. Neither Phillips nor Williamson is expected to meet the 15% threshold of the vote statewide or in any congressional district to be awarded delegates.
The eventual Democratic nominee will need 1,968 total delegates nationwide to secure the nomination. The state’s Republican presidential primary is scheduled for Feb. 24, featuring South Carolina’s former governor, Nikki Haley, against former President Donald Trump.
Biden’s victory was widely anticipated, given his incumbent advantage and substantial lead in polls leading up to Election Day. His success in Democratic primaries in South Carolina, particularly his 2020 victory, played a pivotal role in securing the nomination.
While the actual delegate count is still being finalized, Biden’s margin of success in the primary will provide the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party with their first ballot box measure of how well the president is faring among key Democratic party constituencies.
This projected landslide victory will also offer a significant boost to his campaign as he moves forward to the next contest in Nevada on Tuesday, where 36 delegates are up for grabs. The president has a campaign event scheduled in Las Vegas on Sunday.
South Carolina’s open primaries allow any registered voter in the state to participate in either party’s primary. This year, South Carolina was the first official delegate-awarding primary, breaking with tradition as historically, New Hampshire held the first Democratic primary.
The Democratic National Committee made the switch under the direction of Biden, arguing that South Carolina’s demographic diversity better represented the Democratic Party and would provide a more accurate reflection of a campaign’s health compared to New Hampshire. The president did not win the 2020 Democratic primary in New Hampshire.
