UPDATE: Joe Biden got about half the overall vote, better than expected. In the exit poll, he got 56 percent of the rural vote (which accounted for 41 percent of the sample) and 61 percent of the African American vote (which was 57 percent of the sample).
South Carolina's presidential primary today is "a fight on back roads and in small towns over who appeals to rural and black voters and who really understands their issues," Lisa DesJardins reports for the PBS NewsHour.
At the 2010 census, South Carolina's population was about 34 percent rural and 29 percent African American. But most South Carolina Democrats are black, and so are most South Carolinians who live in "non-core" counties, those without a city of 10,000 or more.
DesJardins says the fight in South Carolina is between former vice president Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and billionaire Tom Steyer, whose rural and black support gives him hope of beating out Sanders for second place. Biden is favored, following a good debate performance and the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, who as House majority whip is the nation's highest-ranking federal politician.
Biden long ago called South Carolina his "firewall" because of the African American support he earned from eight years in the White House with the nation's first black president. However, "Black voters here aren't particularly enthused about their options," The Washington Post reports, introducing a deep dive by reporter Vanessa Williams on Wadmalaw Island south of Charleston. The Post also has a video story by Kate Woodsome and Joy Sharon Yi, featuring black South Carolinians who say they have a lot more immediate concerns than the presidential election.
Harold McClain, who was a student protester in the 1960s, told DesJardins that he trusts Biden as a unifier, and thinks Sanders goes too far, but he indicated that the black vote is up for grabs: "Contrary to popular belief, we're a pretty diverse voting bloc."
The Post notes, "South Carolina doesn’t have partisan voter registration, which means Saturday’s Democratic primary is open to everyone. A sizable swath of the electorate will therefore be moderate-minded independents who are uncomfortable with Sanders’s revolutionary rhetoric."
On the NewsHour's political-analysis segment Friday night, New York Times columnist David Brooks said it will be interesting to see how many black votes Sanders can get. As for Biden, "If he has a 10-point win, he can stay afloat" until March 3, Super Tuesday, when 14 states vote. But they noted that Biden is so short of money that he is not running TV ads in those states.
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| South Carolina's black population skews rural. (Rural Policy Research Institute) |
At the 2010 census, South Carolina's population was about 34 percent rural and 29 percent African American. But most South Carolina Democrats are black, and so are most South Carolinians who live in "non-core" counties, those without a city of 10,000 or more.
But some rural African Americans told Trymaine Lee of MSNBC that the candidates haven't paid enough attention to the state's rural areas. "They feel left out, they feel abandoned," Lee said in a report Friday. One man in Eadytown told him, "They don't think . . . of us out here in the country."
DesJardins says the fight in South Carolina is between former vice president Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and billionaire Tom Steyer, whose rural and black support gives him hope of beating out Sanders for second place. Biden is favored, following a good debate performance and the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, who as House majority whip is the nation's highest-ranking federal politician.
Biden long ago called South Carolina his "firewall" because of the African American support he earned from eight years in the White House with the nation's first black president. However, "Black voters here aren't particularly enthused about their options," The Washington Post reports, introducing a deep dive by reporter Vanessa Williams on Wadmalaw Island south of Charleston. The Post also has a video story by Kate Woodsome and Joy Sharon Yi, featuring black South Carolinians who say they have a lot more immediate concerns than the presidential election.
Harold McClain, who was a student protester in the 1960s, told DesJardins that he trusts Biden as a unifier, and thinks Sanders goes too far, but he indicated that the black vote is up for grabs: "Contrary to popular belief, we're a pretty diverse voting bloc."
The Post notes, "South Carolina doesn’t have partisan voter registration, which means Saturday’s Democratic primary is open to everyone. A sizable swath of the electorate will therefore be moderate-minded independents who are uncomfortable with Sanders’s revolutionary rhetoric."
On the NewsHour's political-analysis segment Friday night, New York Times columnist David Brooks said it will be interesting to see how many black votes Sanders can get. As for Biden, "If he has a 10-point win, he can stay afloat" until March 3, Super Tuesday, when 14 states vote. But they noted that Biden is so short of money that he is not running TV ads in those states.
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