THE DAILY 202, WASHINGTON POST
-- Hillary Clinton’s firewall in the South turns out to be quite durable.
Not only did black voters make up a greater share of the electorate in South Carolina’s Democratic primary than they did eight years ago, but preliminary network exit polls show that Clinton actually won the crucial constituency by a slightly wider margin on Saturday than Barack Obama did in 2008.
More than six in 10 voters yesterday were African American. Among them, Clinton led Bernie Sanders 86 percent to 14 percent, according to the exits. For context, the first black president beat Clinton 78 percent to 19 percent among South Carolina blacks during their face off.
-- White liberals do not a winning coalition make: Hillary will very likely win all the states with large black or brown populations. Bernie will win a bunch, but by no means all, of the states that are overwhelmingly white. (Hillary actually carried whites 54-46 in the South Carolina). Game it out, and factor in the establishment-minded super delegates, and Clinton now appears virtually certain to become the Democratic nominee.
-- Non-white voters will account for more than 40 percent of Democrats who vote in the 11 contests on Tuesday.
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| Some of the many women at Hillary's party in Columbia last night. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post) |
-- To be clear: Sanders is not ceding the black vote, and the race is not over yet.
- Sanders’ strategists thinks he can win in five of the 11 states that vote Tuesday: Minnesota, Massachusetts, Vermont, Oklahoma and Colorado. Minorities will make up a relatively small percentage of the electorate in all but one of them.
- Texas, the biggest delegate prize on Tuesday, will be a telling window into how much traction Sanders has gotten among Hispanic voters. His campaign is adamant that they won Latinos in Nevada last weekend; the Clinton team is just as adamant that the entrance polls were wrong. Texas, where Clinton beat Obama 51-47 in 2008, will tell us who is right.
- -- Sanders may have spent relatively little time on the ground over the past week, but his campaign invested quite heavily in the Palmetto State: He had about 200 field staffers, opened 11 offices and spent $1.7 million on TV and radio ads. His team hoped to exceed low expectations; instead, they underperformed them. They will not be able to put these kinds of resources into any of the upcoming states.-- Hillary anchoring herself to the president is paying dividends: Seven in 10 South Carolina Democratic voters said they want the next president to continue Obama’s policies, rather than pursue a more liberal agenda.
- -- The youth vote did not come through for Sanders this time. Clinton actually won black voters under 45 by a three-to-one margin, and there were not that many white voters under 45. Voters under 30 made up a smaller share of the electorate in South Carolina (about one-sixth) than any of the first three states.-- South Carolina Democrats were less liberal than their counterparts in Iowa, New Hampshire or Nevada.---- Sanders fared best among those who said “honesty” was the most important quality in their vote, but he only tied Clinton among these voters. Clinton did best among those who said their most prized quality was experience and electability. But, in good news for Clinton, about 7 in 10 South Carolina Democrats said they believe her to be honest and trustworthy. (CNN has a nice display of all the exit polling here.)
- “Hillary crushed Bernie among voters who agree that our economic system favors the wealthy. That's his wheelhouse, and he won only 30 percent of their vote,” Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum notes.
Hillary arrives back in South Carolina for primary night after campaigning all day in Alabama. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)