Democratic voters in South Carolina are headed to the polls Saturday for the fourth showdown between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. And the very likely outcome: Clinton appears set to win a blowout victory — potentially even greater than Sanders’s own previous landslide in New Hampshire — fueled in part by a wide appeal to minority voters.
The poll from Emerson College has Clinton at 60 percent of likely voters, against 37 percent for Sanders, almost the exact opposite of the result in New Hampshire.
Within the poll, 71 percent of African-American respondents support Clinton, versus 25 percent for Sanders. But even among South Carolina’s white Democratic voters, the poll shows Clinton leading 57 percent to 40 percent.
The difference is even starker in the survey from Clemson University: Hillary with 64 percent, and Bernie at just 14 percent. Between these two polls, the the support for Clinton is quite similar, with a vast difference only in Sanders’s showing.
So far in the Democratic primary campaign, Clinton won the Iowa caucuses by only a razor-thin margin, and then faced a stark defeat from Sanders in New Hampshire. She came back to a narrow victory in the Nevada caucuses and now appears set to win the the fourth contest with such a sweeping victory that it could restore her momentum toward the nomination — and, maybe, cast doubts upon Sanders’s ability to reach out beyond his base of younger white voters and into the minority communities that fuel Democratic wins in the general elections.
Photo: Saffron Cafe and Bakery owner Ali Rahnamoon (R) kisses the hand of U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as she arrives to greet voters at his cafe in Charleston, South Carolina, February 26, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
