Joe Biden breathes new life into his campaign with landslide South Carolina win

Joe Biden delivered a landslide victory in the South Carolina primary vote on Saturday, breathing new life into his presidential campaign and establishing himself as the main moderate competitor to Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“We are very much alive,” a visibly elated Biden said at a victory rally in Columbia, the state capital. “For all of you who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind this is your campaign.”

“Just days ago, the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead,” he added.

The victory, brought by a surge in support among African American voters, comes at a turning point in the campaign. There are just two days before Super Tuesday, when 14 states and two other constituencies will go to the polls to award a third of the total number of presidential delegates, which eventually determine that Democratic nominee.

Biden will be hoping to ride the momentum out of South Carolina to a strong showing next week, where he faces an aggressive Sanders campaign that continues to surge in the critical states of California, Texas and Virginia, and when billionaire and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg will be on the ballot for the first time.

The win marks the first time that Biden – who ran unsuccessful campaigns for president in 2008 and 1988 – has ever claimed victory in a presidential primary.

Biden, Barack Obama’s former vice-president, used his victory speech to present himself as the Democrats’ most viable chance of defeating Donald Trump in November’s general election.

“We have the option of winning big or losing big, that’s the choice” he said. “We need real changes, right now. Something I’ve done my whole career, and I’ll do as president.”

In a thinly veiled criticism of Sanders, an independent senator who is running for president as a Democratic candidate, he urged voters to elect “a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat”.

Sanders came a distant second on Saturday with 20% of the vote, close to the number he scored when he lost resoundingly to Hillary Clinton here in 2016.

“Tonight, we did not win in South Carolina. That will not be the only defeat. A lot of states in this country. Nobody wins them all,” Sanders told a crowd in Virginia, as he pivoted quickly to ballots next week. “Now we enter Super Tuesday.”

The sheer strength of Biden’s victory here, he scored 49% of the vote with 95% of precincts reporting at 11pm ET, and won most of the state’s 54 delegates, puts significant pressure on other centrist candidates, namely Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, to consider their future in the race. Both scored well below the threshold to secure any delegates from South Carolina, failing to secure major support from African American voters, who comprise 60% of the Democratic electorate in the state. Both have now fallen behind in the overall delegate count.

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who is more ideologically aligned with Sanders, also had a poor night, coming in fifth with just 5% of the vote.

Despite poor showings in both recent debates, Bloomberg’s campaign has indicated they will continue their campaign into Super Tuesday. On Saturday, Bloomberg announced he had bought an unprecedented three minute advertising slot to be broadcast on Sunday on a number of major TV networks. He has spent $500m of his personal fortune on the race.

As news of Biden’s victory broke almost as soon as polls closed, Trump mocked Bloomberg on Twitter and called for him to leave the race.

He said the outcome “should be the end of Mini Mike Bloomberg’s Joke of a campaign. After the worst debate performance in the history of presidential debates, Mini Mike now has Biden split up his very few voters, taking many away!”

The South Carolina primary did mark the end of the line for the contest’s other billionaire candidate, the former hedge fund manager and climate change activist Tom Steyer. After finishing third in a state where he had invested tens of millions of dollars, Steyer told supporters at a rally in Columbia: “We were disappointed with where we came out.”

Projections indicated Biden won 61% of the black vote, as his popularity was cemented after a key endorsement earlier in the week from the powerful South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, the most senior African American Democrat in Congress.

Clyburn, who had withheld his affirmation following Biden’s poor start to the primary season, introduced the former Delaware senator on Saturday evening. “This campaign, this year, is about the goodness of America. And we have, as our candidate, a real good man,” Clyburn said, as he played to the major messaging of Biden’s run, which has been to present himself in marked contrast to the shambolic and divisive leadership of Donald Trump.

But earlier in the day Clyburn had been frank about Biden’s need to reinvigorate his campaign and address the lack of organization that has characterized his ground game in early states and many of the major Super Tuesday locations.

“We will have to sit down and get serious about how we retool this campaign,” told CNN. He added: “I’m not going to sit back idly and watch people mishandle this campaign.”

Clyburn’s remarks are reflective of the uphill battle Biden still faces to surpass Sanders’ campaign in a race that is about scoring enough delegates, 1,991, to win the nomination.

Biden’s win on Saturday takes his tally up to 41, just 12 behind Sanders, according to CNN. Pete Buttigieg is currently third with 26 delegates with Elizabeth Warren on eight and Amy Klobuchar on seven lagging behind.

1,344 delegates will up for grabs on Tuesday, meaning a decisive victory for Sanders could make his lead an even higher mountain to climb.