Exit polls show it was a landslide victory over Vermont Sen.
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Hillary Clinton has secured a big win over Bernie Sanders in the SC primary, the latest battleground in the race to be Democratic presidential nominee.
“To South Carolina, to the volunteers at the heart of our campaign, to the supporters who power it: thank you”, Clinton tweeted after winning with nearly 73 percent of the votes, reported Al Jazeera.
Clinton was declared the victor by nearly all major US TV networks at the end of the voting.
The huge margin of victory – she won almost 74 per cent of the vote – will extend her lead over Sanders in delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.
The victory is her strongest yet in the 2016 primary contest after she narrowly won the Iowa caucuses and was trounced by Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire primary. “[Ms. Clinton] could effectively put the race away on Tuesday if she were to do as well on Super Tuesday as she has done in SC and Nevada“, David Wasserman, analyst for the non-partisan Cook Political Report, told USA Today.
“Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again, America has never stopped being great”, she told cheering supporters in Columbia after the win.
“When we come together, and don’t let people like Donald Trump try to divide us, we can create an economy that works for all of us and not just the top 1 percent”, Sanders said. If he loses blacks by similar margins in the Southern states that vote Tuesday, Clinton would likely take a delegate lead hard for the Vermont senator to overcome.
Sanders, expecting defeat, left the state even before voting was finished and turned his attention to next Tuesday’s delegate-rich contests.
The win marks a moment of redemption for Clinton, who in 2008 lost badly in the state to Barack Obama, whose victory here served as a turning point for his own campaign. What her campaign desperately needs is momentum and maybe, just maybe, Super Tuesday will be that boost.
Both Clintons spent numerous days running up to the primary crisscrossing the state, and the former secretary of state picked up key endorsements, including that of U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of SC. However, she has a substantial lead among superdelegates, the Democratic Party leaders who can vote for the candidate of their choice at this summer’s national convention, regardless of how their states vote. Six states had more than 50 Republican respondents – New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Texas and California – and Trump won all of them, with Rubio coming in second in Virginia, Florida, Texas and California.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are in a pitched battle for the Democratic nomination but where do they stand on the issues, and where do they differ from their presidential predecessors? He also carried those who identified themselves as independents.
During her victory speech, she encouraged Americans to confront persistent racism. Sanders was last in the Palmetto State on Friday after multiple polls predicted Clinton to win the state by a large majority.
Sanders now heads to Super Tuesday looking to make a comeback.
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Then Clinton went to her own favorite criticism of Sanders.
