A first successful test.
President Joe Biden handily won the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday.
According to official but still partial results, the octogenarian, who counted on a large black electorate in this conservative state in the south of the United States, obtained more than 96.4% of the votes against two other candidates almost unknown to the general public. .
The American president, who was himself in California on Saturday evening before going to Nevada (west) on Sunday with a view to the next vote on Tuesday, immediately estimated that in November he would beat his probable Republican opponent, the former president Donald Trump.
Read alsoDemocratic primary in the United States: in South Carolina, Joe Biden conquers the black vote
“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 losing Donald again Trump,” he said in a statement.
“The stakes in this election could not be higher.
Extreme and dangerous voices are at work in the country, led by Donald Trump,” he said.
A partly disappointed electorate
If the black electorate in the United States traditionally leans Democratic, several recent polls show that their support for Joe Biden is crumbling, particularly among young people, who believe they were not heard enough during his mandate.
According to a New York Times/Siena poll conducted in November, 71% of black voters in six key states support Joe Biden - up from 91% in the 2020 election - and 22% would vote for Donald Trump.
Although South Carolina is expected to remain in Republican hands in the November presidential election, as it has since 1980, the president has made it clear that he views the state as an important test.
He has already been there twice since the start of the year.
Read alsoAmerican primaries: Joe Biden, an octogenarian in the campaign
“I think he did his best,” Annette Hamilton, 63, said Saturday as she voted in a church hall in north Charleston.
Asked about the possibility of a Joe Biden victory in November, she replied: “I pray to God that he wins.”
“I was a Democrat for 20 years.
I even participated in the Obama campaign,” said Regina Sidik, 56, a black caregiver who attended a news conference of the former president’s supporters in Columbia, the state capital. , this week.
“But today, after seeing what this world will become, I opt for Trump,” she confided.
The highly scrutinized participation rate
During this first official vote in his race for the Democratic nomination, which Joe Biden is almost guaranteed to win, it is above all the participation rate, particularly in the African-American electorate, which had to be scrutinized.
In 2020, African-Americans in South Carolina, numerous in proportion to the population of this former slave state in the southeast, allowed Joe Biden to save his campaign during the primary, helping him open up a way to the White House.
Facing the 81-year-old president was a little-known elected official from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, heir to a wealthy ice cream company, and Marianne Williamson, author of best-sellers on personal development.
Both barely exceeded 2% of the vote.
On Saturday, Joe Biden made an appearance at his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, in his state of Delaware, before leaving to campaign in California and Nevada.
“It’s not just a campaign.
It's more of a mission.
For the good of this country, we must not lose (…) And I say it from the bottom of my heart.
It’s not about me, it goes well beyond me,” he insisted.
Joe Biden focuses his strategy on the threat to democracy that, according to him, the American billionaire constitutes.
“As an aside, foreign leaders tell me one after the other:
You must win
,” the president slipped in Wilmington on Saturday.
In South Carolina, the Republican primary at the end of February promises to be more spectacular than that of the Democrats because Donald Trump will try to deal a fatal blow to the former governor of this state, Nikki Haley.