Hillary Clinton wins South Carolina primary

Clinton allies quickly touted the breadth of her victory.

Sanders may already have been looking toward Super Tuesday before it was over in SC. Clinton will also hold a rally in Springfield.

The primary also comes just a day after the State Department released its penultimate batch of Clinton emails from her private server.

On March 1, Super Tuesday, Democrats will vote in 11 states, six of which are expected to see African-American voters turn out in huge numbers. Less than 1 in 10 said they trust Sanders over Clinton.

Given Super Tuesday is heavy on Southern states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia – this is very troubling for Team Sanders.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, had trailed Clinton in SC, according to the RealClear Politics average of polls, which had Clinton leading by an average of 26.6 percentage points.

Still, he did invest heavily in SC, with 200 paid staff on the ground and an aggressive television advertising campaign. She won the support of almost 9 in 10 black voters, crucial Democratic backers who abandoned her for Obama in 2008.

Clinton’s sweeping victory suggested SC voters had put aside any lingering tensions from her heated 2008 contest with Obama.

Clinton won all women voters by 58 points and carried black women (37 percent of the electorate) by 78 points. On Friday, she stopped at a café and ran into a bridegroom and customer with his friends and ended up in a photo of the men, who knelt at her feet, as if at a wedding.

She touched on issues including criminal justice reform, and thanked several black mothers whose children died in police-related incidents for their support throughout her campaign. Clinton and Sanders split the vote among white college graduates.

But the New York Times said if Clinton racks up similar proportions of the black vote in the South on Tuesday as she did in SC on Saturday, it would greatly reduce Sanders’s chances to win the Democratic nomination. A total of 53 delegates are available in the South Carolina Democratic contest.

Younger voters, however, a key part of the Sanders base, were a much smaller share of the electorate than in previous contests this year. SC was the first state of the 2016 primary season with a significant African-American population.

The win gives Clinton a welcome boost over Bernie Sanders.

Clinton won black voters under 30 years old 56-43 percent, NBC News’ exit polls showed Saturday night.

The difference between the two is the massive support Clinton’s received from superdelegates, which are leaders in the Democratic Party who get an automatic vote in the convention.

On the eve of the vote, Mr Sanders was endorsed by Robert Reich, a former official in Bill Clinton’s presidential administration.

“This campaign is just beginning”, he said in a statement.

Although Clinton’s campaign had some rough early contests – getting blown out in New Hampshire and winning narrow victories in Iowa and Nevada – she is now in a strong position to secure the nomination. As has been mentioned, Super Tuesday is one of the biggest days on the election calendar.

He added: “Our grassroots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won’t stop now”. Nevertheless, by election night, he wasn’t planning on being in SC the night of the primary.

“We’ve now gone through four early states and I want to congratulate Sen”. I appreciate the many friendships that Jane and I have forged with people across SC, where I was all but unknown when this campaign began 10 months ago.