Exit polls show African-American voters made up a larger portion of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate than in 2008, with a larger percentage of them voting for Hillary Clinton than they did for then-Senator Barack Obama.
Yesterday [February 27, 2016] African-Americans made up 61 percent of voters, a six point rise from 2008’s 55 percent. Eighty-four percent of all Black voters went with Clinton. In 2008, only 78 percent of Black voters went with President Obama in South Carolina.
It’s still unclear on whether those numbers are a result of a greater Black voter turnout, or because less white voters decided to show up to the polls this year.
Bernie Sanders saw previous victory in New Hampshire, where a 93 percent white electorate cast their ballots. But, down in South Carolina, although he garnered the support of white voters over Hillary Clinton by a 20-point margin, white voters making up only 35 percent of the electorate couldn’t have given Sanders the slightest chance in edging out the strong Black electorate.
Forty-four percent of the electorate agreed the economy/jobs were the issues that matter most to them; 75 percent of them voted for Hillary Clinton. 43 percent of the electorate agreed race relations in this country had gotten worse; 71 percent of them voted for Hillary Clinton. Oddly enough, 79 percent of voters believed the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy, 70 percent of these voters went with Clinton over the anti-Wall street crusader, Senator Sanders.
Bernie Sanders got the majority of voters in categories such as young voters aged 18-29, getting 54 percent of their vote. He also managed to garner 55 percent of the voters who believe the next president’s policies should be more liberal than that of Obama’s.
March 1 will mark the commencement of Super Tuesday, and while Sanders will be focusing his attention on the five Northern and whiter states where he has an advantage, Hillary Clinton will be fixating herself on the six more Southern and Black states where she’s likely to come out with a victory.
However, the states on which Sanders is focused have less delegates than those of Hillary Clinton, meaning that although he may come out with some great victories this Tuesday, the numbers might not be enough.
Clinton and Sanders will be battling it out for the vote of 1,034 delegates, more than all of the delegate votes in all the primaries and caucuses combined thus far, and the results of Tuesday’s contests will either follow the path that all polls and analysis suggest, or provide us with yet another deterring shift.
