South Carolina Democratic primary: live commentary

Live commentary on today’s South Carolina primary, where Joe Biden has surged back to a big poll lead.  Guest post by Adrian Beaumont.   The main general discussion thread is here.

10:49am Tuesday Overnight, Amy Klobuchar also dropped out.  She and Buttigieg will endorse Biden at a rally today.  Biden has risen in California, and is likely to easily meet the 15% threshold for statewide delegates.  The FiveThirtyEight forecast now shows a tossup between Sanders and Biden as to who wins more delegates.

10:45am Monday Pete Buttigieg has quit the presidential race.  This is likely to help Biden, as Buttigieg was one of the moderates.  Without such a crowded field, non-Sanders candidates are more likely to get over the 15% threshold in California, hurting Sanders’ delegate haul.

4:30pm With all precincts reporting, Biden wins by 48.4-19.9.  There were almost 528,000 Democratic votes cast in South Carolina.

3:11pm In the FiveThirtyEight forecast, there is a 60% chance that nobody wins a pledged delegate majority, followed by Sanders at a 28% chance and Biden 11%.  The chance of a delegate plurality is Sanders 64%, Biden 32%.

3:03pm With 96% reporting, Sanders has hit 20%, but Biden has almost 49%.  Over 500,000 votes now in SC, which makes it the largest turnout increase of any state so far, according to Nate Cohn.

2:05pm With 87% reporting, Biden leads by 28.6% in the SC popular vote.  The Green Papers has Sanders gaining two delegates for a 38-16 Biden delegate split.  If only two candidates are viable, as in SC, then half-delegates are the crucial line.  A candidate who is just over half a delegate gets the full delegate, while if they’re just under, they get no delegate.  On the latest results, Biden’s remaining vote fell below a half-delegate in one Congressional District and statewide.

Sorry if the above explanation is confusing!

1:50pm It’s a dismal showing for Buttigieg, Warren and Klobuchar.  Buttigieg has 8%, Warren 7% and Klobuchar just 3%.

1:38pm I recommend The Green Papers for tracking delegate counts.  They currently have Biden winning SC’s 54 delegates by 40-14 over Sanders.  After four states, Sanders still leads the delegate count over Biden by 58-53 with 26 for Buttigieg.  But remember only 4% have been awarded so far!

1:32pm With 69% reporting, Biden has a 105,000 popular vote lead over Sanders in SC.  That’s enough to give him the overall popular vote lead after four states have reported.  Also, Tom Steyer has dropped out of the Democratic nomination contest.

1:17pm With 57% of E-day votes in, it’s Biden 50%, Sanders 19%, Steyer 12%.

12:43pm With 27% of Election Day precincts in, Biden leads Sanders by 52-18 with 12% for Tom Steyer.

12:20pm With 9% of Election Day precincts in, it’s Biden 53%, Sanders 17%, Steyer 12%.  Sanders’ numbers are creeping up as more Election Day vote is counted.

12:12pm NY Times analyst Nate Cohn tweets that Sanders is doing much better on Election Day than postal votes in the ten precincts that have reported both.

12:09pm With 5% of election day precincts reporting, Sanders is up to 15.5%, above the 15% threshold for statewide delegates.

12:07pm Sanders had a big win in last Saturday’s Nevada caucus, but it was Biden who surged before SC.  So the big SC Biden win won’t necessarily help him on Super Tuesday.

11:52am The vote we’ve got so far is mostly postal votes.  Only five election-day precincts are in.  Sanders will hope he does better when more of the election-day vote comes in.

11:45am So far just two counties in initial results – York and Greenfield – where Sanders is above 15%.

11:33am So far, Sanders is at less than 15% in all counties reporting.  If that persists, he would be shut out of delegates.

11:25am First actual results have Biden with 70%, Tom Steyer at 14% and Sanders just 10%.

11:05am Biden CALLED the winner by CNN based on exit polls.  He has a 60-17 lead over Sanders with black voters, who made up 56% of the electorate, slightly down from 61% in 2016.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at the University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

Polls in South Carolina close today at 11am AEDT.  It’s a primary, not a caucus, so it is handled by the state’s election authorities.  Shortly before the Nevada caucus, the RealClearPolitics poll average had Joe Biden’s lead over Bernie Sanders down to just three points.  But in the last week, Biden has pulled away again, and now leads Sanders by 12.5 points.  There is large variation in the Biden leads, from four points to 21 in individual polls.

Another favourable point for Biden is that in the last two contested Democratic primaries (2008 and 2016), polls in South Carolina greatly understated the victory margin for the candidate with more black support (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton).

In national polls, Sanders has 29.5%, Biden 18.4%, Mike Bloomberg 15.5%, Elizabeth Warren 12.1%, Pete Buttigieg 10.5% and Amy Klobuchar 5.0%.  Bloomberg and Klobuchar are down on last week, while Biden is up a little.  If Biden has a big victory in South Carolina, will that boost him enough to be competitive with Sanders?

As of South Carolina, only 155 pledged delegates, or 4% of the total of 3,979, will be allocated.  The biggest day of the primaries is three days later.  On Wednesday AEDT, 14 states vote, and 1,357 delegates (34% of the total) are allocated.  The largest delegate prizes are California (415 pledged delegates) and Texas (229).  Polls close from 11am to 3pm AEDT.

Democratic delegates are awarded proportionally, but with a high 15% threshold applied at both the state and Congressional District (CD) level.  So if a candidate is just below the 15% threshold in a large state, that candidate is likely to win CD delegates from variation in their vote share.

In the RealClearPolitics Super Tuesday averages, Sanders has 32.5% in California, followed by Warren at 15.3%, Biden 12.5%, Bloomberg 10.8% and Buttigieg 9.5%.  If this occurs, it will be a BIG delegate haul for Sanders from California.  However, US polls include undecided voters, so it may not be that bad for the non-Sanders candidates. In Texas, Sanders has 26.0%, Biden 20.0%, Bloomberg 18.7% and Warren 13.3%.  Biden needs a major boost from South Carolina to stop Sanders getting a large delegate lead in three days.

One complication for Sanders is that California takes four weeks to fully count all its votes.  Votes counted after Election Day skew heavily left.  Based on Election Day counts, the media could say Sanders had a disappointing night, and this narrative could impact his chances in later March states.

The only reason that Donald Trump has a realistic chance of re-election is the good US economy.  The coronavirus-caused stock market rout last week is bad news for Trump.  If the economy falters on an issue that draws attention to the US healthcare system, Trump’s ratings are likely to fall, and his re-election chances will deteriorate.

288 comments on “South Carolina Democratic primary: live commentary”

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  1. Steyer is dropping out apparently. He really had no choice after this.

    Buttigieg made it pretty clear in his speech that he isn’t going anywhere yet. Another poor result for Pete, Amy, and Warren.

    Biden got the win he desperately needed. What happens now that Bloomberg is about to make his debut is anyone’s guess. All those ads have to make a difference, so is Biden about to have his momentum sucked away again? The establishment just keep getting in each other’s way.

    Bernie has been creeping up a bit as the result keeps coming in. The poll a few days ago that predicted Biden and Bernie would be the only ones to get any delegates seems like coming true.

  2. Steyer out. This is a good move.

    Billionaire activist Tom Steyer says he is suspending his presidential campaign.

    Steyer, who was one of two billionaires in the Democratic primary race, spent more than $260 million of his own money on his campaign. He had invested more heavily in Nevada and South Carolina than some of the other candidates, and some polls in January had shown him surging into the top tier of candidates.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tom-steyer-drops-out-of-presidential-race/2020/02/29/645f3d40-4d53-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html?arc404=true&itid=hp_no-name_hp-breaking-news%3Apage%2Fbreaking-news-bar

  3. “ It’s been a roller-coaster couple of weeks for you hasn’t it Andrew. Wednesday should bring a bit more clarity.”

    Really? In what way? Bernie wins a bunch of states with about 35% of the PV – with the other cannibalising each other for 65% of the ‘non Bernie’ vote. Bernie getting less than 15% in Florida – the second most likely pathway to tossing Trump slams shut if he is the nominee.

    I suspect Amy will be next to vote herself off the island, but Bloomberg and Biden will stick until its too late – depriving Buttigieg and Warren of sufficient oxygen that they are forced to shut up shop in am month.

    Then we’ll really have a climate extinction event – 4 fossils fighting over the scarps of what used to be America.

  4. “ Steyer out. This is a good move.”

    Who cares about Steyer. At least he – like Yang – value added to the debates.

    His campaign was never the oxygen thieving type like Biden’s or Lil Mike’s.

  5. Hi everyone,
    As candidates drop out, what happens to any delegates that they have accumulated along the way – do they become un-pledged convention delegates (entitled to vote in the first round) or is there some other process?

  6. Looks like a two-horse race from here unless Bloomberg can pull a rabbit out of the hat. Likely followed by a messy contested convention.

  7. Andrew_Earlwood @ #55 Sunday, March 1st, 2020 – 1:49 pm

    “ Steyer out. This is a good move.”

    Who cares about Steyer. At least he – like Yang – value added to the debates.

    His campaign was never the oxygen thieving type like Biden’s or Lil Mike’s.

    His polling outside of South Carolina is extremely low.

  8. “ Looks like a two-horse race from here unless Bloomberg can pull a rabbit out of the hat. Likely followed by a messy contested convention.”

    Followed by Trump winning the most one sided election since FDR in his prime.

  9. But still below 2008, even with more registered voters, and more relaxed rules as to can vote.

    Bernie was supposed to bring out a whole movement, but he has failed.

    This has disaster written all over it.

  10. Agree but the Democrat doesn’t need to win by the margin Obama did. We just need the Democrats to hold the states they currently have and add Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to the group (all three have been traditionally blue states).

  11. I think Sanders would have won had he been the candidate against trump in 2016, but will not beat Trump as incumbent. Bloomberg has proven to be a dud, so Biden with a good running mate (Warren?) looks like the best option to take out Trump.

    Hopefully the corona virus stockmarket crash damages Trump’s claim of economic good times, but in reality, I think the market will rebound well before November, and in post-truth USA, trumps supporters will believe it if they are told things are booming regardless of reality. I think we are looking at 4 more years.

  12. But still below 2008, even with more registered voters, and more relaxed rules as to can vote.

    Bernie was supposed to bring out a whole movement, but he has failed.

    This has disaster written all over it.

    It is SC it is incredibly deeply conservative, it isn’t really the place for a progressive revolution.

  13. kirky:

    Thanks for that, very interesting to play around with.

    So, the closest Democratic losses in 2016 were Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. If the Democrats hold all their remaining states and win Florida at least and one of the other three, or lose Florida but win the other three, they win.

    Their closest wins, on the other hand, were Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Fortunately, none of them have a particularly large share of electoral votes, but if the Dems lose any of those, then winning Florida becomes a lot more crucial.

  14. Exit one billionaire, enter another.

    Their millions have washed out the primary picture while adding little to the contest of ideas (although Steyer at least tried to keep climate change in the headlines).

  15. So, the closest Democratic losses in 2016 were Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. If the Democrats hold all their remaining states and win Florida at least and one of the other three, or lose Florida but win the other three, they win.

    Their closest wins, on the other hand, were Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Fortunately, none of them have a particularly large share of electoral votes, but if the Dems lose any of those, then winning Florida becomes a lot more crucial.

    Losing hope in holding all rust belt states no matter who gets the nomination. Florida becomes very important. Starting to wonder if Texas needs to be brought into play. And been a while since we have seen a NC or Ohio poll.

  16. A crushing and much-needed win for Joe Biden, both in terms of vote share, and (more importantly) delegates, drawing the former VP to within shouting distance of Bernie Sanders on the latter count. To say that Biden’s campaign needed this is an understatement. He was flatlining after two very poor results in Iowa and NH, followed by a distant second in Nevada, and he had been talking up his strength with black voters generally and with those in South Carolina in particular. The fact that his win looks to have far exceeded most predictions gives Biden a huge boost heading into Tuesday.

    So there we have it, the traditional first four contests of the nominating calendar have been run and (mostly) won. Sanders is still the front-runner for mine, but by a lot less than it seemed a few days ago, and the question marks about Bernie’s lack of appeal for African-American voters have been underscored. As noted above, Biden is definitely back in the game, especially with a range of southern states (where the Democratic electorate has a similar profile to SC) voting this coming week. Impressions in politics are often more important than the reality, and while Biden’s comeback in SC shouldn’t be over-stated, it may yet spark a real surge across March.

    These early contests suggest that the race will soon boil down to a race between two septuagenarians in Biden and Sanders – not the ideal outcome for a Party relying in part on the youth vote to win, but given the flaws in all of the other candidates (and of course in Bernie and Uncle Joe as well), perhaps not surprising. Someone like Andrew Cuomo might be looking like a good bet by now if he’d decided to run.

    Of the rest, Steyer has dropped out, while Warren and Klobuchar have demonstrated that their brief surges are now long gone, and Buttigieg also looks to have peaked. Depending on how things run on Tuesday, the Party would be best-served by each of them making a dignified exit later this week. The only remaining candidate still to be tested electorally is of course Bloomberg, but I suspect that Biden’s resurgence will see Mayor Mike underperform on Tuesday, and in time drop out of the race (though the good thing for the Dems is that he has signalled that he would continue to pump money into the race, such is his distaste for Trump).

    Of course, to paraphrase Churchill, this is not the end of the race, and it’s not even the beginning of the end – but it is the end of the beginning. Super Tuesday will go a long way to shaking this nomination battle down to its fundamentals, with a progressive standard bearer (without question Sanders) up against a single moderate candidate (most likely Biden). Given that around two-thirds of voters in all four states so far have voted for moderates, it does appear more likely than not that we’ll have a Trump v Biden contest in November.

    Biden has several well-documented weaknesses (his age, most obviously, along with a tendency to waffle), but most polls for the last year have suggested that he is best-placed to beat Trump in the general. Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen, but we may soon be about to find out.

  17. “Asha Leusays:
    Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 2:45 pm

    Their closest wins, on the other hand, were Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nevada.”

    So, if Sanders is the nominee, are there any states which went moderate Democrat who might swing Republican? Not because I can see individual voters changing from a Clinton to a Trump, but more some of those Clinton voters not turning out.

    Sanders will mean Florida is likely to go to the Republicans, so it makes it tight.

  18. Sanders will mean Florida is likely to go to the Republicans, so it makes it tight.

    He has done OK in some of the Florida H2H v Trump polls. In two of them he was up by more than the MoE.
    So you would have to base such statements on your understanding of how the Florida electorate will react to Trumps attacks. Which is exactly why we need vigorous Dem primary debates mimicking Trumps attack lines and watching how Sanders defends them…. followed by more polling.

    I reckon peeps in Florida already know enough about Sanders and his brand of socialism – and it is reflected in the polls showing neck and neck. I wouldnt be calling Florida a loss if Sanders gets the nomination. Especially if he selects the right VP.

  19. In regards to the general election, I agree that the key states are the three Rust Belt states that Trump won off the Dems in 2016, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, along with that “mother of all swing states”, Florida. Trump can only really afford to drop one of those and still win.

    Added to those big four are a few other states that are close enough to flip, such as the GOP-won Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Iowa (plus Maine’s second CD EV), and the Dem-held New Hampshire, Nevada and Minnesota. I’d guess that only Arizona is at genuine risk of falling (it’s certainly been trending Blue for some years), while I’d say that only NH is a likely flip the other way.

    Adding it all up, any Democratic nominee is largely guaranteed 228 Electoral Votes, while Trump will almost certainly win at least 203. Beyond the safe (or safe-enough) states, there are a further 107 EVs, made up of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, NH, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona, along with the single split CD EVs in both Maine and Nebraska. Most likely, the Dems will retake Michigan, and hold NH, while Trump will I think end up holding NC and the Nebraska spare vote, bringing us to Dems 248 v GOP 219. You’d probably rather be the Dems in that scenario, as winning Florida or any two of the others would be enough (noting that there are a couple of tie possibilities), but Trump does still have a path to victory, without doubt.

  20. Josh Kraushaar@HotlineJosh
    ·
    4h
    .
    @mikememoli reports on MSNBC that there was unusually high turnout in white moderate Republican precincts around Charleston. Suburban voters. (Dems picked up the SC-01 House seat on the heels of these indy voters.)

    One of the key swing votes in the 2020 general election.

  21. A really big though expected win for Biden in his most sympathetic State, we’ll find out shortly if that will translate to further wins even though his polling hasn’t looked too impressive. Sanders, although he would have liked to be within 10 points, wouldn’t be too bothered by his distant second. At least it’s only a two-way division of the spoils.

  22. Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to the group (all three have been traditionally blue states).

    Not completely. After Reagan – sure.

    Heck, even Dukakis managed to win Wisconsin.

  23. Which is exactly why we need vigorous Dem primary debates mimicking Trumps attack lines and watching how Sanders defends them…. followed by more polling.

    He didn’t fare very well at the last debate, when he finally received some close scrutiny. Just bluff and bluster and avoiding answering the question.

    Anyway, today’s Primary looks like the people who propelled the Dems to the House Majority came out today and said, ‘Anyone But Bernie’. But Uncle Joe is their preferred choice.

  24. Mike Memoli@mikememoli
    ·
    3h
    Biden asks Democrats who want a Democrat as their nominee, “an Obama-Biden Democrat,” to join him

    Imagine if Obama comes out to endorse Biden….

  25. C@t:

    Joe Walsh will be hopping mad. When he was on Real Time a few weeks ago he was adamant his campaign was coming back strongly. 😆

  26. Simon Katich – Wisconsin has voted Democratic in all Presidential elections since 1992, bar one, 2016, but in truth, the state has slowly trended Red over the last couple of decades. Obama won the state by 14% & 7%, but the Dem wins in 2000 & 2004, and Trump’s win in 2016 were all by less than 1%. It’s also true that most of the Rust Belt consistently voted GOP under Reagan and Bush 41, so none of those states can be considered safe Democratic, by any means, and Ohio and Iowa have moved so far Red as to no longer be considered swing states any more.

  27. Confessions @ #81 Sunday, March 1st, 2020 – 4:10 pm

    Mike Memoli@mikememoli
    ·
    3h
    Biden asks Democrats who want a Democrat as their nominee, “an Obama-Biden Democrat,” to join him

    Imagine if Obama comes out to endorse Biden….

    And that’s exactly why the Latino community should vote for him on Super Tuesday!

    Bernie Sanders didn’t create the Dreamers. Obama-Biden did.

  28. C@tmomma @ #79 Sunday, March 1st, 2020 – 4:04 pm

    Which is exactly why we need vigorous Dem primary debates mimicking Trumps attack lines and watching how Sanders defends them…. followed by more polling.

    He didn’t fare very well at the last debate, when he finally received some close scrutiny. Just bluff and bluster and avoiding answering the question.

    Anyway, today’s Primary looks like the people who propelled the Dems to the House Majority came out today and said, ‘Anyone But Bernie’. But Uncle Joe is their preferred choice.

    No they didn’t. They said Biden (admittedly in a fairly resounding fashion) and they said Sanders. And the other ‘anyones’ barely got a look-in.

  29. C@t:

    The Bernie campaign has done a lot of work wooing the Latino vote. He has apparently learned from his experience in 2016.

  30. Confessions says: Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 4:10 pm

    Mike Memoli@mikememoli
    ·
    3h
    Biden asks Democrats who want a Democrat as their nominee, “an Obama-Biden Democrat,” to join him

    Imagine if Obama comes out to endorse Biden….

    ************************************************************

    Sorry I can only post a bit of Rick Wilsons/Daily Beast Members Only column but ……

    Rick Wilson‏Verified account @TheRickWilson · 53m53 minutes ago

    I have some post-SC thoughts:

    “It’s Time for Barack Obama to Man Up and Endorse Joe Biden”

    NOW OR NEVER

    Here’s the simple, 60-second script 44 can deliver that would melt down every social media platform in the world.

    Joseph Robinette Biden won a Presidential primary tonight, the first of his long career in politics. He shocked the national punditocracy with a win that went far beyond all expectations. He delivered the speech of his career, and for the first time in a long time had a happy warrior aspect that was a very different Joe Biden than we’ve seen in the past, gloomy weeks. Biden’s win reset the race, and means that there are a lot of hugely consequential decisions coming for almost everyone even tangentially involved.

    The biggest decisions are in the hands of two men: Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg.

    Obama is the most important player in this equation.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-time-for-barack-obama-to-man-up-and-endorse-joe-biden

  31. Bellwether @ #86 Sunday, March 1st, 2020 – 4:26 pm

    C@tmomma @ #79 Sunday, March 1st, 2020 – 4:04 pm

    Which is exactly why we need vigorous Dem primary debates mimicking Trumps attack lines and watching how Sanders defends them…. followed by more polling.

    He didn’t fare very well at the last debate, when he finally received some close scrutiny. Just bluff and bluster and avoiding answering the question.

    Anyway, today’s Primary looks like the people who propelled the Dems to the House Majority came out today and said, ‘Anyone But Bernie’. But Uncle Joe is their preferred choice.

    No they didn’t. They said Biden (admittedly in a fairly resounding fashion) and they said Sanders. And the other ‘anyones’ barely got a look-in.

    Oh, I thought it would be you. I guess I was just imagining this?

    Confessions @ #75 Sunday, March 1st, 2020 – 3:44 pm

    Josh Kraushaar@HotlineJosh
    ·
    4h
    .
    @mikememoli reports on MSNBC that there was unusually high turnout in white moderate Republican precincts around Charleston. Suburban voters. (Dems picked up the SC-01 House seat on the heels of these indy voters.)

    One of the key swing votes in the 2020 general election.

  32. and Ohio and Iowa have moved so far Red as to no longer be considered swing states any more.

    I tend to agree they are out of play. Except…. the two polls so far in Ohio (both last year – but reputable polls) showed Biden way ahead of Trump.

    There is a wild card in Ohio. Kasich. He may well endorse Biden. Unlikely, but possible.

  33. Confessions says: Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 4:34 pm

    phoenixRed:

    I was just about to post the same!

    ****************************************************

    Hi Confessions – for me, you and Victoria – hopefully Joe Biden is on the phone to Kamala Harris in California before Super Tuesday to get her to be his running mate and pick up another 421 delegate votes – and also nominating Adam Schiff to be his AG …… and maybe, just maybe, deliver some true justice to Trump and Barr

  34. phoenixRed:

    for me, you and Victoria – hopefully Joe Biden is on the phone to Kamala Harris in California before Super Tuesday to get her to be his running mate and pick up another 421 delegate votes – and also nominating Adam Schiff to be his AG

    And picking up the endorsement of the Obamas.

  35. I think it will be Biden-Stacey Abrams with Kamala Harris as AG. Adam Schiff needs to hang around to take over as House Majority Leader after Nancy Pelosi retires.

  36. Now that Biden has won his first primary ever, his challenge now becomes showing that he can build a broad coalition and back it up like Bernie has.

    It was the win Biden needed to keep his campaign alive but one state won’t win him the presidency, especially a solid red state like SC.

  37. Hi Confessions – for me, you and Victoria – hopefully Joe Biden is on the phone to Kamala Harris

    I hear that the lowest risk demographic for coronavirus is women in their late 50’s.
    .
    .
    .
    .

    I may have just made that up.

  38. I don’t reckon Obama will be sidelined this time around like he was in 2016. For one thing he’s a free agent now, not a sitting president. And four years of Trump has made even those who disliked Obama and/or disagreed with his policies long for the Obama years of sanity, respect for the office, corrupt-free governing, and upholding the rule of law.

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