Perspectives on Palmetto politics

A week ago, it was the Republicans’ turn. Today, S.C. Democrats weigh in on the presidential contest, and the national media go away. But before they do, let’s take a look at what some of them have to say about voters here:

Maybe not so predictable

Thousands of mostly black demonstrators gather to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday by demanding equal access to education at an NAACP rally. “We couldn’t celebrate (King) and the Confederacy,” Hillary Clinton tells the crowd. “We had to choose. South Carolina finally made the right choice.”

The speech is typical Clinton: fluent, flattering to both her and her audience, with plenty of shout-outs to local worthies; it even name-checks Bree Newsome, the activist who cut down the Confederate flag in the aftermath of the murders at Emanuel AME Church. As she had in the debate the night before, Clinton wraps herself tightly in President Obama’s mantle. She also reads from Dr. King’s last speech — the passage about how he’d been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land. Around her are signs advertising Women for Hillary and African Americans for Hillary.

Lillie Hart isn’t impressed. “I don’t like being patronized,” she says. A lawyer from Columbia who’s supporting Sanders, Hart brought along her friend Maritha Frederick, a retired English teacher, who says that Clinton’s fame is also a burden. “She has some baggage,” Frederick adds. “There will be those who will resist her because of who she is.”

The Sanders supporters I’d seen in Charleston the night before had been mostly young and mostly white. So I was surprised to see such a mix of ages — and so many African Americans — among his supporters at the Capitol. Tracey Houston, a recent criminal-justice graduate from South University, says he thinks Sanders will do well among young black voters. “Bernie’s been working to help us for a long time,” he says. “And the way he talks about police violence — it shows he gets it.”

The campaign may have started late, but even Gray allows that “the most activity I’ve encountered has been from the Sanders people.” In late January, Justin Bamberg, the state senator representing the family of Walter Scott, who was fatally shot by North Charleston police last year, announced that he was switching his support from Clinton to Sanders after meeting with the Vermont senator.

Gray says he’s more concerned with “how to be useful when this is over” than which candidate to vote for. Still, the ferment in a state that expected to be taken for granted has its uses. “We need to decide whether the Democratic Party can be redeemed — and whether we can bring enough voters to the polls to make that happen,” says Gray. “We need to figure out how to apply pressure — locally — for things like redistricting.”

Why S.C. Democrats get to vote early

In South Carolina, younger voters represented a smaller proportion of African-Americans and, while there are already signs Sanders will make inroads among them, Clinton is counting on solid majorities from middle-aged and older black voters. And as a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed, while Sanders does better among 18-to-29-year-old South Carolina African-Americans than among older ones, he still trails Clinton in that younger group.

Indeed, along with the elected officials who are automatic “super delegates,” African-Americans remain the closest thing that Clinton has to a “firewall” that will help her withstand the momentum Sanders gained in New Hampshire.

It’s likely that more than half of South Carolina Democratic voters who turn out will be black, and African-Americans also will account for a large portion in some states voting on March 1. Unless Sanders wins enough of that vote and replicates his New Hampshire showing among whites, he will have difficulty winning the bulk of their delegates.

An interesting footnote: the fact that Nevada and South Carolina are in position to help Clinton restore her tattered front-runner status is the result of a decision several elections back to make the early nominating process more representative.

Democratic Party leaders decided the way to balance the impact of the non-typical, overwhelmingly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire was to schedule early tests in two states with more diverse populations. They added South Carolina, because of its large African-American population, and Nevada, because it has a substantial number of both Hispanics and labor union members.

Taken as a group, party leaders felt, the four states would provide a more accurate picture of how Democratic Party voters felt as a whole than just Iowa and New Hampshire. This year, they will have the added impact of showing whether the strong Sanders showing, especially in New Hampshire, was unique or represents broader sentiment among Democrats.

If Sanders can make the kind of inroads among the younger minority voters of Nevada and South Carolina that he did among the white voters of Iowa and New Hampshire, it will show that Clinton’s candidacy is in greater trouble than most analysts ever imagined was possible.

The fire meets the wall

Now that we have moved away from Iowa and New Hampshire, where the geography and demography favored Sanders, the fire is about to meet the wall in South Carolina.

There most factors favor Clinton.

One of the biggest reasons for this: African-American voters.

While the percentage of Iowa’s black caucusgoers this year was just 3 percent and New Hampshire’s primary voters was just 2 percent, in 2008, the last time South Carolina held a competitive Democratic primary, black voters made up a whopping 55 percent of the voters.

There are compounding factors that make the state even harder for Sanders to win.

The percentage of younger voters in South Carolina is likely to be smaller than the percentage in Iowa and New Hampshire has been. In 2008 and this year, the percentage of Iowa Democratic caucusgoers under 30 years old was 22 percent and 18 percent respectively. In New Hampshire, the percentage for primary voters under 30 was 18 percent and 19 percent, respectively. The number of voters under 30 in South Carolina in 2008 was 14 percent.

South Carolina also has slightly more female voters. While Democratic primaries and caucuses generally tend to have more female than male participants, South Carolina is one of the most female primaries. In 2008, only 39 percent of the people participating in the Democratic primary in that state were men. That was compared with 43 percent men in both Iowa and New Hampshire. This year Iowa was again 43 percent male, but New Hampshire grew to 45 percent male.

Clinton won the female support in Iowa, and although she lost it in New Hampshire, she lost it by a smaller margin than she lost the male vote by.

Now Sanders, the clarity candidate, has to do a nuanced dance around his criticisms of President Barack Obama, of whom these black voters are likely to be protective and to whom they are likely to have allegiance.

And on the horizon are many more states that look more like South Carolina than Iowa and New Hampshire.

This story was originally published February 26, 2016 at 1:20 PM.