Oh My: With That Number, It Looks Like Joe Biden Has a Massive Crack in His SC Firewall

Matt Vespa | February 24, 2020 11:45 AM

Former Vice President Joe Biden needs to win South Carolina. I mean, he really needs to win the Palmetto State—and not just by a few points. Sen. Bernie Sanders stomped everyone out in Nevada. Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa, won New Hampshire, and now could do well in South Carolina. The momentum is solidly behind him. There doesn’t appear much that could stop him.

Biden has always said the South Carolina will be his firewall. Sanders had trouble with black voters in 2016. This state was where Hillary Clinton pretty much put the contest away. Her strength with black Democrats in the South gave her a delegate lead that Sanders could not overcome. Now, the former vice president hopes to hit the brakes on the Bernie train. Yet, it’s possible that Sanders does well with black voters this go-around. CNN’s Abby Phillip made that point in the aftermath of the Nevada caucuses. And right now, Joe Biden’s support with black voters has dipped 19 percent since November (via Newsweek):

Former Vice President Joe Biden has lost nearly one-fifth of his support among black voters in South Carolina, a new poll released Sunday finds.
Biden's overall support in the country's next primary state, which he has staked as his struggling campaign's turnaround, has fallen to just a single-digit lead over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders versus his massive 28 percent lead over all candidates just three months ago. A CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday also identifies another problem with Biden's potential wooing of black voters - Tom Steyer. The billionaire Democratic presidential candidate has skyrocketed from just 2 percent support among black South Carolina voters in November to 24 percent today.
And in that same time period, Biden has lost 19 percent of support, 54 to 35 percent, from black voters in South Carolina.
"I'm the only one who has the record and has the background and has the support" of the black electorate, Biden told Politico last week, echoing a claim he has made throughout his campaign. But the CBS News/YouGov data released over the weekend exposes a crack in his plan to draw overwhelming support from the majority-black primary voters on February 29.