South Carolina Democrats hold their primary today. Here’s why it matters : NPR

Democrats in South Carolina are voting Saturday in what’s the social gathering’s first official main contest for 2024.

President Biden backed the push to vary the social gathering’s calendar this yr to place South Carolina’s main on the entrance of the pack, forward of Iowa and New Hampshire. It is not a state that Democrats anticipate to win within the common election, however by elevating its main, the Democratic Get together is signaling the significance of Black voters — an important a part of its base.

Because the incumbent president, Biden is anticipated to hold the first. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and writer Marianne Williamson are additionally on the poll.

Regardless of skipping the unsanctioned New Hampshire main, Biden gained that race after voters wrote in his identify — although the outcomes will not depend towards his official nomination on the social gathering’s conference in August.

South Carolina boosted Biden’s 2020 bid

In 2020, Biden circled his struggling marketing campaign within the state, the place Black voters account for about 60% of the social gathering’s voters.

“I would not be right here with out the Democratic voters of South Carolina, and that is a truth,” Biden stated at a dinner in Columbia, S.C., final weekend.

The Biden marketing campaign sees South Carolina as a springboard for his reelection bid and has poured assets into the state over the previous month. Biden campaigned at a barbershop and spoke at a luncheon at a Black church. Vice President Harris campaigned within the state on Martin Luther King Jr. Day — and returned on Friday to talk at a traditionally Black faculty. First woman Jill Biden attended a gala for Alpha Kappa Alpha, a traditionally Black sorority.

“We all know that to be the Democratic nominee and to win the final, you could be getting loads of assist from voters of coloration,” stated Josh Marcus-Clean, the Biden marketing campaign’s communications director for state operations. “And that is what South Carolina is all about.”

Polls have proven Biden has been lagging in approval rankings with youthful voters and nonwhite voters, so analysts shall be paying shut consideration to turnout as a sign of whether or not Biden’s message is resonating.

However Terrance Woodbury of HIT Methods, a gaggle that researches Black voter attitudes, cautioned in opposition to overanalyzing the outcomes of this main — a contest that possible will primarily entice social gathering devoted, somewhat than the broader group of Black voters that Biden must win in battleground states like Georgia and North Carolina.

“The voters that Democrats have to mobilize within the common election aren’t taking part within the main election,” Woodbury advised NPR.