COLUMBIA, S.C. — Voters are out at the polls Saturday to pick their preferred candidate in the 2024 South Carolina Democratic Primary, a contest lacking much suspense as President Joe Biden is expected to carry the state for a second straight time.
Polls are open until 7 p.m. Anyone still in line at 7 p.m. will be allowed to vote. WLTX will have live results after polls close.
The three candidates on the ballot are Biden, author and motivational speaker Marianne Williamson, and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota. Biden is the heavy favorite, as most major Democrats chose not to oppose the incumbent president for the nomination.
At Biden’s urging, the Democratic National Committee rearranged the 2024 primary calendar and slotted South Carolina as the first contest of the campaign season, citing in part the state’s far more racially diverse electorate than the traditional first-in-the-nation states of Iowa and New Hampshire, which are overwhelmingly white. New Hampshire held a leadoff primary anyway in defiance of the DNC, but without the president’s or the national party’s backing and no delegates at stake, the contest amounted to little more than a non-binding beauty contest. Biden won New Hampshire by a sizable margin nonetheless after supporters mounted a write-in campaign on his behalf.
What do I need in order to vote?
You must be registered to vote in South Carolina. You can check your status and make any updates at scvotes.gov
The voter registration deadline for voting in the Democratic Presidential Primary was January 4; the deadline for voting in the Republican Presidential Primary is Thursday, January 25.
You will need a photo ID in order to vote. The photo ID can be one of the following:
- a valid driver's license
- ID card issued by the SC Department of Motor Vehicles
- Voter registration card with photo
- federal Military ID
- US Passport
Who Gets to Vote
South Carolina has an open primary system, which means any registered voter may participate in any party’s primary. Voters may only participate in one party’s presidential primary, so those who vote on Saturday may not vote in the Republican contest on Feb. 24.
Delegate Allocation Rules
Proportional by statewide and congressional district votes with a 15% threshold. South Carolina’s 55 pledged Democratic delegates are allocated according to the national party’s standard rules. Twelve at-large delegates are allocated in proportion to the statewide vote, as are seven PLEO delegates, or “party leaders and elected officials.” The state’s seven congressional districts have a combined 36 delegates at stake, which are allocated in proportion to the vote results in each district. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the statewide vote to qualify for any statewide delegates and 15% of the vote in a congressional district to qualify for delegates in that district.
Decision Notes
Biden’s decisive victory in the 2020 South Carolina primary offers some useful benchmarks in determining the winner on Saturday night as votes are being counted.
In 2020, then-candidate Biden carried all 46 counties in the state. His strongest geographic regions were in the Pee Dee and Waccamaw River valley areas in the state’s eastern region and in central South Carolina, including the state capital of Columbia. He received about 54% of the vote in both areas. He was also the top choice among Democratic primary voters in the state’s Democratic and Republican strongholds, as well as in the more moderate areas in between.
But the key to Biden’s 2020 win in South Carolina was his strength among the state’s Black voters. AP's VoteCast survey of 2020 South Carolina primary voters found that 64% of Black voters supported Biden, compared with 33% of white voters. Black voters made up about half of the Democratic primary electorate that year, according to VoteCast.
If Biden matches or outpaces his performance in counties with large Black populations in initial results throughout the state, it is a strong indicator of another decisive win in the Palmetto State.
Changes Since 2020
Saturday’s event will be the first presidential primary held in the state since a new early voting law was enacted in May 2022. The law allows voters to cast ballots in person up to about two weeks before Election Day without an excuse. In the 2016 Democratic primary, when voters had to provide an excuse to cast an absentee ballot, about 14% of votes were cast before Election Day. In the 2022 midterm primaries, after the new law went into effect, pre-Election Day voting was at about 21%.