Not only will the American presidential election be played out this month, but it will take place in South Carolina. Democrats are holding their first real primary there today. Then, on February 24, the Republicans will organize the primary which will confirm their candidate in the presidential race. By the end of the month, we will know everything we need to know.
Let’s start with the Democrats. This is the first time in decades that the Iowa caucuses, then the New Hampshire primary, have not opened the season for choosing the presidential candidate.
In 2020, Joe Biden did poorly in these two states before experiencing spectacular success in South Carolina, winning every county and finishing nearly thirty points ahead of Bernie Sanders.
He and his entourage then concluded that Iowa and New Hampshire, with an electorate that was too white, no longer represented the United States of today; South Carolina and its Democratic electorate, more than half of which was black, deserved to be the first to vote.
BLACK PEOPLE, STILL IN THE ACT?
Today’s vote will be a consecration for Joe Biden, since he has no credible opponent in this race. However, the ballot does not lack interest. At the end of 2023, a major poll of New York Times revealed that in six strategic states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – 22% of black voters planned to vote for Donald Trump.
A shock all the more violent since Trump only won 8% of the African-American electorate in 2020 and 6% in 2016. The former president will perhaps not reach 22% support, but as pointed out in New York Times Cornell Belcher, a former pollster for Barack Obama, said the “biggest fear is not that they will choose Trump, but that they will not vote at all.”
Knowing that in some states, the gap between a victory and a defeat is only fractions of the vote, the demobilization of a few thousand voters could have a significant impact.
NIKKI HALEY’S HONORARY BAR
Nikki Haley, who finished third in Iowa and eleven points behind Donald Trump in New Hampshire, hopes to create a surprise in South Carolina, a state where she was governor for six years.
This was, unfortunately for her, before Trump entered politics. The Republican electorate is no longer the same. As proof, a fresh survey from Washington Post gives him 32% of voting intentions against… 58% for Trump, twenty-six points ahead!
In detail, the figures are even more depressing for the 52-year-old candidate: convinced Republicans – the majority in South Carolina – prefer Trump, and his supporters are much more enthusiastic.
We will therefore see this month if Joe Biden succeeds in mobilizing the coalition that brought him to power in 2020 – minorities, young people, women – and if Donald Trump continues to rally those disillusioned with the system and the very electorate. conservative.
It is in February, I tell you, that the presidential election really begins.
SOUTH CAROLINA, CONSERVATIVE AND REPUBLICAN
Courtesy photo
Population:
Racial composition:
- 63.5% White
- 26% Black
- 6.6% Latinos
2020 presidential election:
- Trump 55.22%
- Biden 43.43%
Political representation:
- Two Republican senators
- Six Republican representatives, one Democrat
- Republican governor, continuously since 2003
