A historic Democratic primary | The Press

The race for the Democratic nomination for the 2024 presidential election officially begins this Saturday in South Carolina, with all due respect to New Hampshire, whose Democratic primary, held on January 23, was not recognized by the leaders from the party of Joe Biden. If the suspense is not there in the Palmetto State, the story is, as is a crucial issue for the president, namely his relationship with the black electorate. State of play.

(New York) The choice of South Carolina

This is a first. The Democratic Party has never entrusted a state other than New Hampshire with the honor of holding its first presidential primary.

Why did he choose South Carolina? First, because Democratic leaders wanted to launch the selection of their party’s presidential candidate in a state more representative of their voters than New Hampshire, where 93% of the population is white. The same reason also led them to skip the Iowa caucuses in 2024.

Then Democratic leaders wanted to do Biden a favor, who was keen to give the first 2024 Democratic primary to the state that resurrected his 2020 presidential campaign after his disastrous results from Iowa and New Hampshire.

As for the South Carolina Republican primary, it will take place on February 24.

Black mobilization

The choice of South Carolina remains paradoxical. On the one hand, Joe Biden, if he obtains the Democratic nomination, will have no chance of winning this conservative state in the general election against Donald Trump or any other Republican candidate.

On the other hand, the president had the chance, by addressing South Carolina’s large African-American community, to combat the skepticism, even disappointment, of a significant number of black voters in the countrywide regarding his handling of the presidency (according to a Pew Research Center poll released in January, only 48% of blacks are satisfied with Biden’s work in the United States as a whole, compared to 49% who are dissatisfied).

Thus, during a speech in the black church in Charleston where a young white supremacist gunned down nine black people in June 2015, the president interspersed his calls for racial justice with economic data.

Vice President Kamala Harris also traveled to South Carolina to mobilize the black electorate.

Joe Biden’s rivals

Joe Biden’s two main rivals in South Carolina are the same as in New Hampshire: Minnesota Democratic Representative Dean Phillips and self-help book author Marianne Williamson, who also ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020.

In New Hampshire, Phillips won 20 percent of the vote to Williamson’s 4 percent. More than 70% of voters who took part in the poll gave Biden victory by writing his name on their ballot, where he did not appear.

No delegates were at stake in New Hampshire because of the local Democratic Party’s decision to defy national authorities by holding a primary before South Carolina’s. Fifty-five delegates are at stake in the Palmetto State. They will be distributed proportionally among the candidates having received at least 15% of the votes.

It takes nearly 2,000 delegates distributed through primaries and caucuses to win the Democratic nomination.

The results of a survey

The result of the Democratic primary in South Carolina is even more predictable than that of the Republican primary in the same state, where everyone expects Donald Trump to win over Nikki Haley, his latest rival.

A poll conducted by Emerson College in mid-January indicated that nearly 70% of people likely to participate in the South Carolina Democratic primary intended to vote for Joe Biden, compared to 5% for Dean Phillips and 3 % for Marianne Williamson, the others being undecided.

The same poll indicated that the economy was the number one concern of 40% of all voters in the state, followed by immigration (14%) and “threats to democracy” (9%). Among Democrats, the economy was also top of mind for 22% of voters, but other priorities were health care (16%), “threats to democracy” (12%) and access to health care. abortion (9%).

The rest of things

Like the Republicans, the Democrats will have an important electoral meeting on March 5, the date of Super Tuesday, where 15 states and 1 territory will hold primaries. Among these are the two most populous, California and Texas. Around 30% of Democratic delegates will then be at stake.

For the Democrats, this meeting will be preceded by primaries in Nevada, on February 6, and in Michigan, on February 27. The final caucuses and primaries will take place in early June.

Delegates will then meet in Chicago, August 19-22, to formalize the inauguration of Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate, if all goes as planned over the coming months.