Former US vice president Joe Biden on Saturday notched up a resounding victory in the South Carolina primary, reviving his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and positioning him as the leading rival to frontrunner US Senator Bernie Sanders.
The victory, powered by support from African-American voters, was the 77-year-old Biden’s first in the race and might give him momentum going into “Super Tuesday” tomorrow, when 14 states go to the polls.
“Just days ago the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead,” Biden told hundreds of supporters at a victory rally in the South Carolina capital, Columbia.
Photo: AFP
“You’ve launched our campaign on the path to defeating [US President] Donald Trump,” he said.
“We have the option of winning big or losing big,” Biden added in a dig at Sanders’ prospects against Trump in November’s election.
With 99 percent of the ballots counted, Biden had 48.4 percent to 20 percent for the 78-year-old Sanders.
Billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who spent US$23 million on advertising in South Carolina, was next with 11.4 percent, but announced he was quitting the race even before the final results were published.
Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has been challenging Biden for the centrist vote, had 8 percent, while US Senator Elizabeth Warren had 7 percent.
A victory in South Carolina, where African-Americans make up about 60 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, was seen as crucial to Biden’s hopes of reviving his flagging campaign.
Sanders has been the clear leader in the overall race, winning two of the first three contests and finishing in a virtual tie in Iowa with the 38-year-old Buttigieg.
South Carolina was seen as a key test of Sanders’ support among African-Americans — crucial to a Democratic victory in November — but he only received the backing of about 15 percent of black voters, while Biden received 60 percent, according to exit polls.
Biden finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and second in Nevada, and desperately needed a win in South Carolina ahead of Super Tuesday, which decides one-third of the delegates who formally choose the Democratic nominee at the July party convention.
“The biggest question is whether this will slingshot Joe Biden into victory in some Super Tuesday states,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Sabato said Biden’s primary win — his first in three attempts at securing the Democratic presidential nomination — also increases the pressure on the other centrist candidates to leave the race.
Buttigieg, Warren, US Senator Amy Klobuchar and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg have all made it clear that they would stick around at least through Super Tuesday.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS