For Clinton, the overwhelming victory propelled her into clear frontrunner status ahead of the March 1 voting. Clinton won Black voters younger than 30, but by a lesser margin, 57-43, according to ABC News.
Advertisement
“Tomorrow, this campaign goes national”, Clinton told supporters at an election night rally in Columbia, the state’s capital.
Clinton took a swipe at GOP front-runner Donald Trump, saying “Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again”. With all precincts reporting, Clinton beat Sanders by almost 50 points, winning 73.5 percent to 26 percent.
Clinton’s second White House bid lurched to an uneven start, with a narrow victory over Sanders in Iowa and a crushing loss to the senator in New Hampshire.
Clinton left for Tennessee shortly after claiming victory in SC and in the coming days she will visit Arkansas, Virginia and MA, among other states, in an effort to solidify her support. “We can build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every single American can have that chance to live up to his or her God-given potential”, Clinton thundered.
Clinton had long led by a wide margin in polling of the Palmetto State, where African American voters make up more than half of the Democratic electorate.
To cheers, she said: “When we stand together there is no barrier too big to break”.
Clinton and Sanders continue to fight over who won the Hispanic vote in Nevada.
Democrats will vote in 11 states on Tuesday, the biggest prize of the 2016 campaign to date.
Sanders, expecting defeat yesterday, didn’t campaign in the state yesterday and turned his attention to some of the states that vote in Tuesday’s delegate-rich contests.
As he arrived in Rochester, Minnesota, he said “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose”.
The result is a far cry from Sanders’ last primary race in SC when Clinton lost to Barack Obama in a dominating result. Including superdelegates, Clinton now has at least 536 delegates while Sanders has at least 83. Georgia, Texas and five other states south of the Mason-Dixon Line hold primaries on Tuesday, as do a range of other states from Alaska to Vermont.
And it’s a win over Bernie Sanders that doubles as a strong send off toward Super Tuesday.
Mrs Clinton’s sweeping victory suggested SC voters had put aside any lingering tensions from her heated 2008 contest with Mr Obama. “This campaign is just beginning”, he said. “I think we can win this thing”. Exit polls produced this extraordinary statistic: Clinton got 96 percent of the vote among African-Americans aged 65 or more.
Advertisement
Democrat Bernie Sanders also lashed out at his Republican rival on Twitter, writing: “America’s first black president can not and will not be succeeded by a hatemonger who refuses to condemn the KKK”.
