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After two narrow wins and one heavy defeat in the early nominating states, Hillary Clinton banked her first landslide victory, in South Carolina's primary, that gives her a momentum becoming of a Democratic presidential favourite.
Mrs Clinton heads into the first national day of state ballots in the US presidential race on Super Tuesday with a 73.5 per cent to 26 per cent win over Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. She has matched his rout in New Hampshire. More importantly, she has shown an advantage among black voters who will sway the outcome tomorrow in southern states.
Exit polls showed that Mrs Clinton's "firewall" of southern minority voters held strong against the northern socialist. African-Americans in South Carolina made up 62 per cent of Democratic voters in Saturday's primary election, up from 55 per cent in 2008 when Barack Obama beat Mrs Clinton.
Following a big win among black voters in Nevada, she scored a massive 87 per cent to 13 per cent victory over Mr Sanders among African-Americans in South Carolina, putting her in a strong position to win the predominantly minority populations in the path to the Democratic nomination.
Strong endorsements from South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, the most senior African-American in Congress, and Morgan Freeman-narrated campaign ads helped underscore her support among black South Carolinians while she campaigned effectively on issues of most concern to their community: gun violence and racial inequality.
Race relations
Seven in 10 voters in South Carolina, a state that witnessed the racially motivated gun attack on a black
Mother Emanuel
church in Charleston, said race relations had deteriorated in recent years, exit polls showed.
Mrs Clinton is targeting wins in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia where there is an above-average percentage of black voters, on Tuesday, while Mr Sanders is hoping for victories in the largely white states of Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oklahoma.
Tuesday is a significant day. There are 878 delegates and 156 super-delegates up for grabs, over a quarter of the number needed to lock down the Democratic nomination.
“Tomorrow, this campaign goes national,” Mrs Clinton said in her victory speech on Saturday night. “We are going to compete for every vote in every state. We are not taking anything and we are not taking anyone for granted.”
Mr Sanders won the millennial vote again, beating Mrs Clinton among 17- to 29-year-olds by 54 per cent to 46 per cent, but not by the same margin he enjoyed in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two voting states.
He lost white voters in South Carolina only narrowly to Mrs Clinton, by a margin of just 53 per cent to 47 per cent, so he is far from out of the race.
The voter breakdown in South Carolina, plus data from the votes in the midwest (Iowa), northeast (New Hampshire) and west (Nevada), provides clues about the strategies at play tomorrow.
Mr Sanders will be hoping wide-margin victories in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Colorado will earn him more delegates on a proportional basis to counter Mrs Clinton’s expected sweep in the south.
Strong lead
Polls show the woman who spent almost two decades in the south as the wife of former Arkansas governor
Bill Clinton
with a strong lead in southern states. Mrs Clinton has 544 delegates to Mr Sanders’s 85 – the finish line is 2,383 delegates – but her count includes many super-delegates who could shift allegiance if the 74-year-old senator starts scoring victories among regular voters. He needs to start winning big in some states to turn the tide.
Hoping to keep his supporters energised, he said in Minnesota on Saturday night: “Football is a spectator sport. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Every person in this room is extremely powerful if you choose to use your power.”
In the Republican race, a Super Tuesday loss for Texas senator Ted Cruz in his home state to frontrunner Donald Trump would be disastrous. The billionaire has three consecutive state wins under his belt, though Cruz is leading him in polls in Texas. Trump leads in all but two of Tuesday's states.
The make-or-break day for Florida senator Marco Rubio, third in the polls behind Trump and Cruz, is March 15th when his home state votes among five winner-take-all contests.