Biden going to South Carolina tonight was striking. Candidates have in the past skipped ahead to states where they might be stronger. That’s not the interesting part. What’s interesting is that the next state is Nevada, whose caucuses take place on Feb. 22 (South Carolina is Feb. 29). It’s true that Iowa and New Hampshire have very few black or Latino voters. But Nevada’s Democratic electorate, according to the 2016 exit polls, was 59 percent white, 19 percent Latino and 13 percent black. That’s fairly representative of the Democratic Party. South Carolina’s Democratic electorate in 2016 was 61 percent black, 35 percent white, 2 percent Latino. That’s way, way more black than the Democratic electorate, which is around 59 percent white, 19 percent black and 12 percent Latino. The only other states that are likely to have a majority-black primary electorate are Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. If Biden is strong only among black voters or in heavily black states in the Deep South, that’s not a great path to the nomination. And I think it’s worth highlighting this, because if Sens. Cory Booker or Kamala Harris had spent the New Hampshire primary day in South Carolina, I would have suggested they were too focused on black voters.
