Candidates out in force across South

Clinton notches a sizable S.C. win

Hillary Clinton greets supporters at a victory rally Saturday in Columbia, S.C.
Hillary Clinton greets supporters at a victory rally Saturday in Columbia, S.C.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Hillary Clinton sailed to a commanding victory over Bernie Sanders in Saturday's South Carolina primary, drawing overwhelming support from the state's black Democrats and putting her in strong position as the race barrels toward Tuesday's contests, which include Arkansas primaries.





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AP

Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally Saturday in Grand Prairie, Texas. Sanders vowed to fight aggressively after Hillary Clinton won South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary.

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AP

Hillary Clinton hugs Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., at her election watch party Saturday in Columbia, S.C. Clyburn had endorsed Clinton in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Maps showing Tuesday primaries/caucuses and the delegates at stake for each party.

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AP

Hillary Clinton (left) greets Denise Peterson, owner of Yo’ Mama’s restaurant, Saturday as U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., looks on in Birmingham, Ala.

With 99 percent of the vote counted Saturday night, the former secretary of state led by almost 50 points in South Carolina. Clinton will pick up most of that state's delegates, widening her overall lead in The Associated Press' count. With 53 delegates at stake, Clinton received 39. Sanders picked up 14.

During a victory rally, Clinton briefly reveled in her support from South Carolina voters, then quickly looked ahead to the contests to come.

"Today, you sent a message. In America, when we stand together, there is no barrier too big to break," Clinton said. Acknowledging that South Carolina was the end of the one-state-at-a-time early phase of this campaign, she said, "Tomorrow, this campaign goes national."

Sanders, anticipating Saturday's outcome, left South Carolina before voting was finished and turned his attention to some of the states in Tuesday's delegate-rich contests.

Late Saturday, Sanders conceded defeat but vowed to fight on aggressively.

"In politics on a given night, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose," Sanders said after arriving in Minnesota, one of the states whose delegates are up for grabs Tuesday. "Tonight we lost."

Earlier Saturday, Sanders had campaigned in Texas.

Sanders congratulated Clinton "on a very strong victory" and noted that more than 800 delegates are at stake in 11 contests Tuesday.

"We intend to win many, many of them," Sanders said, going on to chide Clinton anew for accepting money from big business and calling for her to release transcripts of speeches she gave to Wall Street firms for payments after leaving office as secretary of state.

Clinton's victory came at the end of a day in which Republican candidates fired insults at one another as they appeared in Tuesday-election states.

Donald Trump campaigned in Arkansas with former rival Chris Christie, and called Marco Rubio a "light little nothing." Ted Cruz, before campaigning in Arkansas, was in Atlanta, where he asked parents if they would be pleased if their children spouted profanities like the brash businessman Trump does. Rubio, who later Saturday campaigned in Arkansas, mocked Trump as a "con artist" with "the worst spray tan in America."

Clinton allies quickly touted the breadth of her South Carolina victory. She won the support of nine in 10 blacks, as well as most women and voters ages 25 and older, according to early exit polls.

Sanders continued to do well with young voters, his most passionate supporters. He also received the votes of those who identified themselves as independents.

A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders has energized his supporters with impassioned calls for breaking up Wall Street banks, and making tuition free at public colleges and universities. But the senator from Vermont, a state where about 1 percent of the population is black, lacks Clinton's deep ties to the black community.

While Sanders spent the end of the week outside of South Carolina, his campaign did invest heavily in that state. He had 200 paid staff members on the ground and used an aggressive television advertising campaign.

Exit polls showed that six in 10 voters in the South Carolina primary were black. About seven in 10 said they wanted the next president to continue Obama's policies, and only about 20 percent wanted a more liberal course of action, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for the AP and television networks.

A majority of black voters said they saw Clinton as trustworthy and honest -- a marked change from New Hampshire, where she lost badly and where voters expressed concerns about her honesty.

The same exit polls showed that Sanders had beaten Clinton among white voters younger than 45, but there were fewer such voters in the South Carolina primary.

Ruby Hall, who voted for Clinton, said black voters like herself liked Sanders' message but were "really loyal to Hillary because of Obama."

"She made more of a concerted effort to reach out to the African-American voters, and I think it paid off," Hall said.

Clinton's advantage in South Carolina was so large that neither candidate bothered to campaign in the state Saturday. Instead, both flew on to "Super Tuesday" states.

Clinton went to Alabama, another state where black Democrats will be a powerful force in the primary. Sanders went to Texas and Minnesota, where he hopes to again attract the support of young voters, liberals and white working-class Democrats.

Supporting Obama

Clinton's victory Saturday suggested that South Carolina voters had put aside any tension that may have lingered from her heated 2008 contest with Obama. Former President Bill Clinton made statements during that campaign that were seen by some, including that state's longtime U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat, as questioning the legitimacy of the black presidential contender.

This time around, Clyburn endorsed Clinton, and Bill Clinton was well-received as he traveled around the state on her behalf. She focused on issues that had particular resonance in the black community and held an emotional event with black mothers whose children died in shootings.

Clinton had cultivated the support of black voters in South Carolina, expressing her devotion to Obama and promising to build upon his legacy. She capped off months of campaigning there with stops Friday at a popular soul food restaurant and bakery in Charleston, and a rally at a historically black college in Orangeburg.

"I don't think President Obama gets the credit he deserves for digging us out of the ditch Republicans put us in," Clinton said, a line she often used in South Carolina, where Obama defeated her by 29 points in 2008.

The South Carolina primary had been viewed for months as a test of Clinton's "firewall" strategy, an electoral Plan B concocted after her leads eroded in Iowa and New Hampshire. The idea was that many of the things that young voters and liberals didn't like about Clinton -- her long time in Washington, her ties to the Democratic establishment, her incrementalist approach to governing -- would appeal to black Democrats, who would see them as signs of realism and experience.

Sanders sought to undermine the firewall by aiming to attract young black voters and by emphasizing the need to fight police brutality and long mandatory prison sentences. He got endorsements from Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike and from Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who died in 2014 after a New York City police officer put him in a chokehold during an arrest.

"We have got to achieve the day when young black males and women can walk the streets without being worried about being harassed by a police officer," Sanders said in Columbia earlier this month.

Clinton's second White House bid lurched to an uneven start. She received a narrow victory over Sanders in Iowa and a loss to the senator in New Hampshire. She received a 5-point win over Sanders in the Feb. 20 Nevada caucus.

Clinton's campaign hopes her strong showing in South Carolina foreshadows similar outcomes in states like Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia that vote Tuesday and have large minority-group populations.

Taken together, 865 Democratic delegates are up for grabs in Tuesday's contests in 11 states and American Samoa. Sanders is hoping to stay close to Clinton in the South while focusing most of his attention on states in the Midwest and Northeast, including his home state of Vermont.

Going into South Carolina, Clinton had just a one-delegate edge over Sanders. However, she has a sizable lead among superdelegates, the Democratic Party leaders who can vote for the candidate of their choice at this summer's national convention, regardless of how their states vote.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Lisa Lerer, Catherine Lucey and Ken Thomas of The Associated Press; by Abby Phillip, John Wagner, Anne Gearan, Hannah Jeffrey and David A. Fahrenthold of The Washington Post; and by Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy of The New York Times.

A Section on 02/28/2016

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