The president of the United States, Joe Biden, easily won the Democratic primary in South Carolina this Saturday, a state with a majority African-American electorate that in 2020 allowed him to save his then shaky candidacy for the White House. The current president has defeated the two best-placed co-religionists on the ballot: Minnesota representative Dean Phillips and self-help book writer Marianne Williamson.
“In 2020, it was South Carolina voters who showed that experts [demoscópicos] “They were wrong, they breathed new life into our campaign and put us on the path to winning the presidency,” the candidate said in a statement. “Now, in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again, and I have no doubt that you have put us on the path to winning the presidency again, and making Donald Trump a loser…again.”
His personal bet on South Carolina being the first date of the party's primary, citing the greater racial diversity of the state's population compared to the more traditional states of Iowa and New Hampshire, overwhelmingly white, has been worth all the efforts he presented before the Democratic National Committee, the first of which was the modification of the electoral calendar, moving the race in that state from fourth place to first. South Carolina is a red state, but 26% of its residents are black. In the 2020 general election, Black voters represented 11% of the national electorate, and 9 in 10 of them supported Biden.
Today marks the beginning of the Democratic campaign towards the elections on November 5. Biden, however, had already scored key victories such as that of New Hamsphire, where despite his name not appearing on the ballots, he obtained 64% of the votes, as he reminded journalists this Saturday at the Delaware airfield since the one who undertook a trip to Los Angeles and Las Vegas to participate in campaign events.
The African-American electorate is key to his chances in November against Republican Donald Trump, leading in several voting intention surveys. But discouragement has never been a characteristic of Biden, and this Saturday he once again harangued his people with enthusiasm, once again describing the presidential elections as a battle for the survival of democracy itself. Biden has attacked the behavior of Trump, who he said has continued to degrade himself. “The guy we are running against is not for anything. He is against everything,” he said in Delaware hours before the South Carolina results were known.
Biden has expressed his conviction that as Americans begin to pay attention to the upcoming elections, the contrast between him and Trump will help his candidacy. “People are starting to focus,” he said, citing a recent Quinnipiac University poll that shows him six points ahead of Trump, although other polls give the Republican a clear lead. Biden also cited two polls from Pennsylvania that give him an advantage in that state.
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The optimism of Biden, whose rallies are being interrupted almost without exception by pro-Palestinian protesters who reproach him for his support for Israel – it happened again this Saturday in Bel Air, where six vehicles with large Palestinian flags greeted the passage of his delegation -, is It is largely due to the victory in New Hampshire. “By the way, in New Hampshire we weren't on the ballot. We couldn't campaign there. But guess what: we got 64%,” he happily recalled to reporters.
“We have a lot at stake, friends. We have an enormous obligation,” he said of his electoral and even existential dispute, from a political point of view, with the Republican Trump. “This is not just a campaign. This is more of a mission. We cannot, we cannot lose for the good of the country. And I say it from the bottom of my heart. “It’s not about me, it goes way beyond me.”
Despite the candidate's optimism, and the positive surveys he uses, polls such as the one published this Friday by CNN confirm the trend noted in recent months: a minimal but constant advantage for Trump, with 49% support, over Biden, with 45%. Although the improvement of the economy could play in favor of the Democrat, the truth is that he is not able to capitalize on the recovery in percentage of support. His immigration and foreign policy shows the worst prospects, with the lowest approval rate for the former (only 30%). His stance on the war between Israel and Hamas, which threatens to cost him many votes in states like Michigan, among younger Democratic voters and also among the African-American electorate, is based, according to the CNN survey, on the fact that that only 37% believe that the United States is doing the right thing, compared to 33% who consider that it is going too far in its support for Israel.
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