Black Votes Matter: In South Carolina, Hillary Clinton Outperforms Obama

Six in 10 SC primary voters were women, and three-quarters of them said they voted for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is eyeing a decisive win in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential nomination race, with the hope of gaining momentum against Bernie Sanders before the upcoming high-stakes “Super Tuesday” contests. Polls were to close at 7 p.m. Sanders moved on to Texas, one of 11 states participating on next week’s Super Tuesday, before the votes were even counted.

Clinton admitted, once again, that she had “evolved” on the issue – and was “glad” to have done so.

She got 78 percent of the votes, while her rival, Bernie Sanders, could only manage 21.

The rout of Sanders solidified Clinton’s status as the strong front-runner to capture the party’s nomination for the November 8 election in her quest to become America’s first woman president.

Clinton won almost all demographics in SC, but her win was helped by the significant portion of the electorate who were African-Americans. “We are not taking anything and we are not taking anyone for granted”, she says. In Iowa and New Hampshire, voters under 30 made up just under 20 percent of the primary vote.

While Sen. Bernie Sanders’ support rose in the polls for months in the early states, many Democrats crowed about Hillary Clinton’s “firewall”. “Now it’s on to Super Tuesday”. The victory marked the second state Ms. Clinton has captured in a row, following a hard-fought win in Nevada a week ago, and the third state overall. But the senator from Vermont, a state where about 1 percent of the population is black, lacks Clinton’s deep ties to the African American community.

Ahead of Saturday, Clinton campaigned in the Palmetto State with a group of black mothers who lost children to violence or encounters with law enforcement over the previous year. ABC News exit poll results show that 61% of voters were blacks and Clinton won 86% of their votes.

Before South Carolina’s primary, Clinton had just one more delegate than Sanders. “I went for someone I know”, said the housekeeper, who declined to give her name.

“We have so much ugliness and so much violence that I don’t think the government should be involved in that violence and killing people”, Sanders said.

Moments after she clinched a win in the South Carolina Democratic primary, Clinton tweeted: “To South Carolina, to the volunteers at the heart of our campaign, to the supporters who power it: thank you”.

Three-quarters of voters said they want the next president to generally continue President Barack Obama’s policies, while just 2 in 10 want the next president’s policies to be more liberal.