President Biden has won the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, the party’s first-in-the-nation primary this cycle, according to an Associated Press projection.
With 97 percent of votes counted, Biden carried an estimated 96.2 percent of the vote. Marianne Williamson followed in second place with just 2.1 percent, with Representative Dean Phillips in third with 1.7 percent.
While Iowa and New Hampshire have traditionally been the first states in Democrats’ nominating process, President Biden and the DNC decided that South Carolina should kick=start the party’s process this year in an effort to increase racial diversity. “The Democratic Party looks like America, and so does this proposal,” DNC chair Jamie Harrison has said.
New Hampshire Democrats held an unsanctioned primary last month. Biden decided to avoid the spat by leaving his name off the Granite State’s ballot. Still, as a write-in candidate he easily bested Phillips in New Hampshire, with the Associated Press calling the race for the incumbent minutes after polls closed.
In a sign of his confidence in South Carolina, Biden spent the day at fundraisers in Los Angeles, rather than in the Palmetto State. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a get-out-the-vote event at South Carolina State University on Friday.
Biden handily won the South Carolina primary in 2020, besting a more crowded field opponents to reach 54 percent of the vote.
On entering the race in October, Phillips said he felt called to challenge Biden because he was concerned that the 81-year-old president would lose a general-election rematch against former president Donald Trump. Phillips said that he tried to convince Biden to step aside and allow other Democratic candidates to run for president and that he decided to launch his own bid when those efforts proved unsuccessful.
“This was not about me,” Phillips told CNN at the time. “But my inability to attract other candidates, to inspire the president to recognize that it is time, compels me to serve my country because it appears that President Joe Biden is going to lose the next election.”
Phillips, a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, has sought to portray himself as a moderate who prizes bipartisanship. But he voted with Biden’s preferred position on issues 100 percent of the time in 2021–22, according to a FiveThirtyEight tracker. Those issues include collective-bargaining rights, expanded firearms regulations, access to out-of-state abortion service, and funding for the war in Ukraine.
And he has declined to work with Republicans who he believes “bear responsibility” for the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, calling them “dangerous, plain and simple.”
Meanwhile, author and self-help guru Marianne Williamson has mounted another long-shot presidential bid this cycle, despite having run an unsuccessful campaign in 2020.